Far Caspian, aka Irish musician Joel Johnston, told us about his Neve love...
Joel Johnston: A piece of gear I can’t do without is my Neve 1073spx.
It gets used every single day I record and is used on absolutely everything that only requires one mic at a time... which is basically everything for my style of production bar drums.
I grew up in a frugal household and I’ve carried that into my adult life regarding gear. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with paying so much money for something I could probably do without. However I’m a firm believer in preamps being the one piece of outboard gear you really do need and so I spent a long time really questioning what I should get as my introduction into external pre’s. My rule is that if I won’t use it everyday then I’m not allowed to buy it. With the 1073 I’ve no doubt I’ll be using that for the rest of my career in every session.
It’s warm and has a feathery low end (best way I can describe it) so when tracking bass I will 9 times out of 10 opt to DI straight in with the 60Hz cranked-paired with a touch of 3.2Khz seems to marry well with pretty much every bass I’ve recorded so far.
Similarly with snare top - boosting 60Hz and 7.2Khz brings out everything you want in a snare. I learnt that from an Andrew Scheps interview years ago.
When recording acoustic guitar, the combination of my AEA R84 running hot into the 1073 is as good as it gets for me. The highs are present but not scratchy and the mids sit in the mix so nicely.
There’s such a smoothness with it but it can bite when the gain is pushed hard. A lot of fuzz tones I’ve achieved have come from running a DI guitar signal into my Tascam 244 and pushing that hot into the Neve, then cranking the neves gain all the way up. It feels a bit more interesting than just whacking a fuzz pedal on and is certainly a lot more fun of a process!
If I can be out of the box as much as possible whilst tracking the better. Forcing myself to make EQ decisions on the spot makes for a way more interesting and detailed sound and helps me not get so bogged down when I’m in the mix process.
Far Caspian's album Autofiction is out now.
