I don’t know if anyone on this board receives the recording magazine TapeOp but in the latest issue there’s an interview with Sanford Parker who worked with Ministry engineer Keith Auerbach. Here’s a little snip from the interview…
What studio was that?
- It was called Studio Chicago. Most of the sessions we did there were hip-hop and pretty much all tracked to tape. I did get to work with this guy Fluffy [Keith Auerbach] - he’s the guy who engineered [Ministry’s] The Land of Rape and Honey and The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste. I learned a lot from him - there’s one vocal processing thing I still use today, on every metal record I do.
The Al Jourgensen vocal sound? - Yeah. You take a [dbx] 160 and turn the threshold all the way off, then you turn the ratio all the way down so there’s no compression at all, and then turn the output all the way up to where it distorts. Then you send it to another 160, or any other [compressor] - I usually use an [Empirical Labs] Distressor. Then I dial back a reasonable amount [of level] to tape and that’s the one I use for my compression. It’s cool because you talk into the mic and it sounds completely fine; but as soon as you scream, it starts to hit the output of that 160 and breaks up - to me it just sounds natural…