Alan Parson's 10 best bits of music gear ever

MT reader Adam lives in California, near Alan Parsons, who engineered 'Dark Side of The Moon' and lots more. Adam kindly picked Alan's brain for me, persuading him to write this list of his all-time favourite gear...
1. Neumann Km84 Microphone - good for anything except vocals.
2. Fairchild 660 Tube Limiter - great for vocals and bass.
3. Drawmer Noise Gate - although modern plugins can do the job
4. Orban or dbx de-esser for problem sibilance on vocals
5. Audio Technica AT 4033 Microphone. I've been using this as a favorite vocal mic. for years
6. Autotune when used tastefully. Most times it is overused
7. The Fairlight and the Linn LM1 Drum Machine changed the world. I worked with both. It's hard to imagine life without Sampling and Drum sequencers
8. A real orchestra with a great arrangement and a competent conductor. It saves hours and usually $$ too
9. Yamaha Motif XS synth. Easy to use and great sounds
10. Any DAW for time shifting tracks in either direction by microseconds or several minutes. This is a newly afforded luxury in the digital age
Up next: Alan's top tips for music making. (Picture via SoS)

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

more new releases music... nice site.. love it..

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:48 am

Mmmmm, Alan's gear... (droooools)

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:57 am

I like how practical and simple his list needs. Alan Parsons doesn't need to impress anyone with expansive gear normal people will never have....except the Orchestra, but that was funny.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:33 pm

Have you ever priced a fairchild 660? I dont think he is talking about a plugin here. This beast is the epitomy of "expensive gear normal people will never have" And he probably has a rack full of them.
I'm actually very underwhelmed at his list, given how cool his body of work sounds. There is nothing on the list besides the fairchild that I would consider that special. I think he's holding out on us. I bet he has some secret weapons he just doesn't want people to know about. This is a list of pretty generic boring gear. A yamaha Motif! lol

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:29 pm

Actually he tends to not use a lot of outboard gear for processing on his recordings these days. If he recommends it, it's VERY good.

I guarantee this list is what it is for a reason - nothing beats a Fairchild (though most of those are in Nashville right now), and the Yamaha Motif (ES and above) has produced more of the sounds on more records than you can ever imagine. Best sounding key workstation period - especially when it comes to real instrument type sounds. That said, the new XS blows away most synths in their own departments. A truly pro tool.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:57 pm