Total B.S. produces all their material, currently, in their own home based studio.  The audio server is designed by Blair himself and he serves as engineer, producer, musician (playing all the instruments on current songs) graphic artist and soon to be video editor and special effects artist.  Sara also runs the system to record her vocals.  She is well adept at tracking and producing her vocal lines using the "Nuendo" software as well as playing keyboard parts on "Following Forward", the flagship song of their first CD.

Mouse over picture and click for info...

Bass Guitar .... The main driving force behind TBS' serious grooves is the bass used in the recording sessions as well as live.  Blair, use a custom Warwick Buzzard Bass.  This instrument was designed by the late John Entwistle, the bassist for the legendary rock group "The Who"  this instrument is ergonomically designed for optimum playing and unbelievable tone. The neck of this one is graphite composite from Modulus, while the fret board is Bubhinga would with 27 numbered frets (35" scale).  The pickups are Warwick Mec pickups and have a wide range of tones throu a two band parametric eq system.  The bridge is a brass two piece unit.  The nut is brass and has adjustable saddles for each string for optimum string height.

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Monitors ...Alesis’ award-winning Monitor One –
Greater accuracy than ever before.

It didn’t take long to realize we had a hit on our hands. Just a few short months after its introduction, Alesis Monitor One Studio Reference Monitor was a winner of the prestigious TEC Award, and on its way to becoming one of the most popular near field speakers on the market. .... More

Digital Mixer ... The digital mixer used is the "Roland VM3100pro" system that interfaces into the computer via RPC1 PCI based audio card.  This card supports 24bit / 96khz sample rates for a full eight tracks simultaneously.  Up to 4 cards can be used in one system for up to 32 simultaneous tracks.  You'll need the VM7200pro digital mixer to take advantage of this feature, but it's well worth the money, if you ask Blair.

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Drum Triggers ... While the drums on this project are sample (very good ones at that) they are not programmed, but actually played using a KAT DK10 with the KATKick and a Roland sustain pedal for hi hat action.

Server ... The computer system used in the studio is a custom built workstation that flies in the face of other servers.  While it is two years old now, it is quite powerful and soon to be updated.  Current Specs are:

Pentium 4 2.8gig processor

Asus 333mhz bus motherboard

Promise Fastrack Ultra IDE Raid controller

1-80gig 7200rpm Operating System Drive

4-80gig 7200rpm drive set in two Raid volumes of 160gig each.  All drives are in removable drive bays

Asus V7100 128mb graphics card (NVIDIA 5200 pro chipset)

Server Cube Case with 430watt power supply

KDS 19" Monitor

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Recording Software...

Steinberg Nuendo 3 (primary)

Steinberg Wavelab (masterin)

Steinberg Cubase 3

Cakewalk Sonar 4

Bass Preamp ... Blair using a Carvin PB300 bass preamp for live and recording.  He likes this preamp because of it's edgy tone, clean sound and total reliability.  He's used this preamp since 1994 and it has never been in the shop.  The live configuration consist of the PB300 bass head, a Carvin DCM 1000 power amp in mono configuration with a Carvin BRX10 cabinet.

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Plug-ins...

IK Multimedia T-Racks

Waves Diamond Bundle 5

PSP Mastering Pack

TC Electronics

TimeWorks Millennium

Virtual Synths ...

Mics and Mic Pre's

Blair uses a really inexpensive mic for our vocals.  It's the Marshall MXL990 condenser.  We paid $80 for it with the shock mount.  While at one time he had a lot of outboard recording gear it was all turned in for plug-ins.  No hardware preamps or compressors.  It's all done inside the computer now. 

You be the judge... take a listen

Native Instruments

B4 (hammond B3)Pro 53

Absynth 3

Reaktor 4

FM7

Korg

Legacy Cell

MS20

Wavestation

Polysix

Others

RCG audo zt3a

The Grand (piano)

xPhraze

ARP2600 V

PPG Wave

D'Cota

... and more

Drums... While most of you may think that the drummer on this is really a good player and has unbelievable tone, we have a surprise for you.  The drums are actually samples played from a triggering device.  The samples are from a company called fXpansion.  They make what Blair calls a "drum environment".  This DE is the most killer drum sampling system on the market, according to him.  Having the ability to use whatever drumset he wishes, Blair can get exactly the right drum tone for each song produced.  When he wants that big drum sound like John Bonham from Led Zepplin has, he can get it using the Vistalite kit, but Blair uses DW kits and soon Sonar and Gretch Maple kits for that really tight fusion and progressive rock tone that allows for serious articulation needed in syncronized runs.  Take a listen and see how they sound in action.

Guitar Preamp...

All guitars are recorded through a Johnson J-Station desktop preamp. This is a amp simulator that has a very good sound and offers several known amp types as well as cabinet and effects.  This unit is no longer made, so Blair feels fortunate that he had the chance to get one before the company went out of business.  Hear it in action

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