1 on 1 with King Buffalo's, Sean McVay on recording their new album with a pair of LBA Trinity channel strips.

  Below is a series of text messages between Sean McVay and myself on the recording process of their new album, The Burden of Relentless, with a pair of Trinity channel strips.  One of the two channel strips was a much older prototype with less features.  I think you'll find this interesting.  Check out their new album and then read below to see how the sounds came to be.  The photo of Sean, to the right, was taken during the tracking of the previous record.  

Mike:  Fire those girls up yet?  (Trinity's)
Sean:  Sure did!  I did end up using em on kick and snare to much success (new version on kick and old on snare).  I ended up going super clean with the kick with no EQ or anything.  And a touch of EQ on the snare with a little bit more input gain.  Sounding killer so far.
Mike:  That EQ should come in super handy for dialing in the guitar.
Sean:  Yeah, I'm stoked to try it on other things.  I've been extremely conservative with the EQ simply because I'm monitoring in the same room as tracking.  So it's a little tough to know exactly what's going on.  But, I think I really want to run stuff back through it after tracking to really juice stuff and experiment with the EQ more.
Sean:  Drums are sounding sweet.  Tomorrow we finish drums.  In all my editing work though I've been very stoked on the kick and snare sounds from the strips.  
Mike:  Well, you are one of a few people giving me feedback, so bring it on.
Sean:  Best descriptions so far would be.  Thick.  "Vibe".  Didn't use much EQ on kick (just a little lo boost and mid cut).  Little treble and brilliance on snare.  Really nice.
Sean:  Dude, so the Trinity strip has really been kicking ass on bass.  I haven't A/B'd the 2 units on it yet cuz I've just really been digging the mid control on the newer one.  I've found for my purposes, a small/medium boost of all 3 bands is really sweetening it up.  I experimented with the Thunder control and it sounded super bad ass, but I found with Dan's bass it was a little too much (he plays a Music Man with active pickups, so it's coming in pretty hot).  I actually found there was PLENTY of "vibe and dirt" without needing the Thunder or Ribbon settings.  We ran one song super clean (input around 2.5-3) and it had plenty of spank with a smooth upper mid/highs.  We ran another song on the more dirtier side (input only around 12:00).  It sounded nice with a mild bit of rasp/throatiness when he was in the middle registers of the bass, but really brought out a nice growl when he moved down low and laid into his low D (we tune down to D standard).  It's all been sounding super silky and smooth (even when slightly dirty).  But the way it butters up the low end is suuuuper sweet.
Mike:  What were your favorite frequency selections for Bass EQ?  Still not tasting the brilliance?
Sean:  I know I have a touch of brilliance going (maybe like 2:00).  I think 200Hz for the low boost and boosting the mids at 2kHz.  Again prolly around 2:00.  Just giving it a little bit of clarity and attack.  But nothin crazy. 
Mike:  Have you tracked guitar?
Sean:  Haven't done guitars yet, but should be sometime next week.  I have gone pretty conservative with EQ so far cuz some of the songs are gonna have real thick walls of guitar and I don't wanna get myself in trouble.  I plan on running stuff back through the unit once I have more of the layers in.  Then I'll get more aggressive once I have a better idea of how much room I'll have.  
Mike:  Understood.  Depends on the mics too.
Sean:  I went fully DI so far with bass.  I reamped live and recorded an amp track with a 421 mostly just for reference.
Mike:  Was the bass through the TI Box?
Sean:  Nope.  Straight into Trinity.  Split back out via the interface control with virtually no latency into a reamp box, then pedalboard and amp.
Mike:  I love the bass sound direct into a Trinity.
Sean:  I honestly don't think anyone would need anything more from a channel strip for bass.  It just nails it.  I mean of course there isn't one solution for every audio need in existence.  But it's certainly kickin ass.  It definitely has a vibe and signature which is super cool and extremely useful.  There's a very real possibility that almost every single instrument will go through the Trinity at some point on this record haha.  
Sean:  They sounded great on guitar.  I ended up pushin gain pretty hard to give a little extra dirt.  Ended up tweaking the EQ depending on the sound of that particular section.
Mike:  Nice.
Sean:  For heavy fuzz and distortion I cut the brilliance all the way down and tamed the highs.  That combined with the extra dirt was awesome.  
Mike:  Did you use the Thunder feature for that application?
Sean:  No I didn't.  I just needed a little extra push.  The Thunder was a bit too much.
Mike:  How's the record coming?
Sean:  Good!  I think I finally have all the ridiculous layers of guitars done.  I reamped bass yesterday and it's sounding awesome.  Reamped Trinity strip bass DI into an old Ampeg V4.  Miced with a Warm Audio 87 clone into the Trinity strip with the Thunder function.  Beef city!
Mike:  Excellent.
Sean:  So Trinity squared for bass haha.
Mike:  I'm eagerly awaiting this new record.  Have a date yet?
Sean:  Hopefully wrapping up everything within the next 10 days.  Finally started vocals yesterday.  Did the Thunder function trick... sounded so sick... worked perfectly for what I was looking for.  Super present and dry, but full of "vibe".