Old House Studio was started in a renovated farm house in Gastonia, NC in 1998 by David Black and Scott Applegate. When chief engineer David Black passed away in 2005, freelance engineer Chris Garges was recruited to take over management. In 2012, Garges purchased Old House Studio from the original owners and relocated to a 2,000 square-foot commercial facility near downtown Charlotte, NC.
The current Old House Studio location features a large tracking space (roughly 23x31 with 13-foot ceilings), two roomy isolation booths (one fairly "dead-sounding" and one slightly more lively and flexible-- both large enough for a drumkit), a wired sound lock (good for additional amp recording, etc) and a medium-sized control room. There are a number of guitars, basses, keyboards, drums, and amplifiers available, including a vintage Hammond C3 organ and a 7.5-foot vintage Yamaha G7 grand piano.
The studio features a 1991 Amek Angela 36-channel recording console and ProTools 10 running on a 12-core Mac Pro with iZ ADA (RADAR Nyquist) converters and an extremely comprehensive and flexible patchbay with all Mogami and Monster wiring. Available vintage and modern outboard gear includes mic preamps and equalizers from Neve, API, Telefunken, RCA, Langevin, Sontec, Sphere, Daking, Buzz Audio, Drawmer, Sytek, and AwTAC. Dynamics include units by Manley, GML, Neve, Purple Audio, ADR, Altec, Urei, Federal Television Corporation, DBX, SPL, Drawmer, Aphex, and some custom-made units. Effects include studio standards and oddball units by Lexicon, Eventide, TC Electronic, Sony, Yamaha, Dynacord, EXR, Orban, and others. We also have over 100 microphones, vintage and modern, from Neumann, Gefell, AKG, Lawson, Lomo, Coles, Royer, Sony, Altec, Audio Technica, Shure, Electro Voice, RCA, Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Avenson Audio, Oktava, and various others. We have plugins from UAD, Sound Toys, HOFA, Boz, Izotope, Antares, Waves, and others. Studio monitors available include Pelonis 4288s, B&W Matrix 805s, Yamaha NS10Ms, and Genelec 1030s.
There is a custom-designed cue mix system for each performer to create their own headphone mix. There are 15 chairs and a number of music stands available. We have several gobos (baffles) for setup flexibility and good lines of sight between the recording spaces. All the spaces feature oak hardwood floors, but there are several different sizes of throw rugs available for acoustic versatility in each of the spaces.
The studio is designed to be extremely flexible (sonically, and ergonomically) and we are very freelancer-friendly.