Mooka's personal notes:

Well, after attending the AES show in San Francisco this year I couldn't help but go on something of a gear shopping spree and investigate further the cool new products I saw and heard demonstrated. First on the list, thanks to a new endorsement relationship, were a selection of PR-20s, PR-30s, and a PR-40 from Heil Sound's collection of innovative dynamic microphones. Our next venture, which have already proven a huge hit with both staff and visiting engineers, was a pair of Mercury EQ-P1 Pultec recreations. Hats off to Mercury's David Marquette, a long-time Bay Area designer, builder, and restorer, on these wonderful units. Finally, thanks to our new relationship Paul Grove at Summit Audio, we've rounded out the collection of Pultec-style units with Summit's EQP-200B stereo program EQ. These new units of course share our rack with our original vintage Pultec unit.

In the last few months we've begun fruitful endorsement relationships with a number of other audio and instrument companies as well that have us very excited. One was microphone manufacturer Crowley and Tripp, from whom we procured a pair of Naked Eye ribbon microphones that have been absolutely stunning on drums, guitar, and all of Eric Gales' lead vocals. Thanks to a new endorsement relationship with famed pro audio manufacturer Universal Audio, we have acquired their highly respected UAD-1 DSP card and associated plug-ins for the Eugene Productions mastering department. These plug-ins are widely acknowledged as the best recreations of the vintage analog gear by UREI, Teletronics, et. al. that occupies the rackspace in our studios. And of course we have not neglected our guitarist clients - a number of our amps and cabinets now feature boutique speakers thanks to our friends at Tone Tubby, and we now have what may be the ultimate boutique amplifier. Thanks to a new relationship with Two Rock Amplifiers through which Prairie Sun and our clients will serve as beta-testers, we are now proudly in possession of a prototype of the Custom Reverb Signature Version 2, hand-built and customized for Prairie Sun by designer Bill Krinard.

With all this new gear we've been bringing into the studio, and the incredible engineering talent that passes through our studios, I soon realized that we have an amazing educational resource here at Prairie Sun that could be made available to not only our staff, but also to the greater community of producers and engineers out in cyberspace. We're still thinking of ways to get knowledge from point A to point B, but in the meantime we've started the PSR Podcast, with which we plan to provide interviews with visiting engineers, producers, and gear designers as the series continues. It may take us a little while to get wound up, so stay tuned!

Take care everyone, and may you have a Happy New Year!