El Cajon Recording Studio : Their Clubhouse’s Secret Password Is ‘Serious Music’

After Mark Neill and Dave Doyle recorded in major Los Angeles studios, they decided to leave the sterile atmosphere of carpeted walls, drum machines and 64-track recorders behind.

With their country-roots rock band, The Unknowns, former Warner Bros. recording artists, they invested several thousand dollars in vintage equipment and set up a studio in North Hollywood.

Soon their three-track recording operation became Hollywood’s best-known secret, and star-struck long-haired kids came banging on their studio door begging the rockers-cum-engineers to record their demos and advise them on how to break into the industry.

Neill and Doyle, both 26, decided to pack up the Three Track Shack, as they affectionately call it, and move somewhere more remote. They found themselves living with Neill’s mother in rural Dulzura, 28 miles east of San Diego. Now the studio has been relocated to an old house in El Cajon.

Many successful San Diego bands have recorded there, including Alligator recording artists The Paladins and The Tell Tale Hearts, formerly on Voxx Records. However, Neill and Doyle are an exclusive pair and use of the studio is by invitation only.

“We didn’t want the place to turn into a drug den,” Neill said. “We’re serious about our music. We think of the studio as a sort of clubhouse for our friends and serious musicians who don’t have to go into hock to record their demos or albums.”

Although the two musicians prefer to record on a three-track machine, they will record on as many as eight tracks. Most modern studios use a 24-track recorder; however, mega-recording artists such as Michael Jackson, the Pointer Sisters and Whitney Houston will record on up to 64 tracks, Doyle said.

“When they use that many tracks, they layer the sound with overdubs during the mix,” he said. “It makes it sound as if there is more instrumentation than there really is. But what’s the good of having it sound like five guitars when the group only uses two while playing live?”

Doyle and Neill also complain that music recorded on modern equipment is usually remixed by computers.

“The music starts sounding like a machine is making it rather than people,” Doyle said. “We’re into human beings making the music, not technology.”

Doyle and Neill purchased their console, a control board, from Western Studio in Hollywood. Western used the board in the early 1960s to record such legends as the Beach Boys, the Ventures and Nancy Sinatra’s hit “These Boots Were Made for Walking.”

The console, made with vacuum tubes, was cast into Western’s outdated equipment room, only to wind up back in commission. Neill explained that in order to reduce the bulk of modern equipment, in the 1970s vacuum tubes were replaced with integrated-circuit amplifying elements, known as chips.

“A console capable of controlling 64 tracks would have to be a block long if it was made of tubes,” Neill said. “But tubes are the widest path to sound. Chips, on the other hand, reduce everything down to an electronic sound.”

Dusty Wakeman, a successful Los Angeles recording engineer, music producer and owner of Mad Dog Studio in Los Angeles, disagrees with Doyle and Neill.

“If you want to create a modern sound like dance music, modern-sounding country or jazz, you need modern equipment,” he said. “Modern equipment is transparent; it just records what is there. I have to argue that the new equipment has more frequency response and creates a more dynamic sound. The old stuff adds color. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s all subjective. I’ll be the first to admit that on rockabilly and music like that it really flavors the sound.”

Wakeman has heard records recorded in Neill and Doyle’s vintage studio and thinks they sound great.

“I love what those guys are doing,” he said. “But there are two schools of thinking. I think the most important element is the song and the performance.”

Neill and Doyle also agree that the quality of the music is the most important part of making a good record.

“The equipment is not the constant in making good music,” Neill said. “There were bad records being made in 1952. We just advocate sparsity. On a three-track recorder, the track is a lot wider, giving you a better signal-to-noise ratio. Of course, you have to be a better musician to sound good on only three tracks because there is not that much you can do with the remix. The ironic thing is that Michael Jackson hires the best musicians around and then uses 64 tracks. It’s a total waste.”

Doyle and Neill don’t make a living from the studio, which looks more like a machine shop than a place where records are made. Usually the only time they get paid is when a band’s record label foots the bill.

“We don’t want some band to go get day jobs washing dishes, throw their money on the table, and say, ‘This is all we’ve got,’ ” Neill said. “It’s just not worth it to us. If the band is serious and good, we’d rather say go ahead and record and use this as your demo to get signed. Pay us when you’re making it.

“The reward will be when big, local bands can record in San Diego and not have to go to L.A. to get a good sound.”