John Vanderslice

“We enforce tape recording,” he says. “Pro Tools… [can make] the boldest, ‘fuck you’ punk band turn into the most paranoid weirdos. People get very timid very quickly. You need to encourage boldness and a certain kind of violence in recording.”

To capture the violence, he calls upon a curated array of vintage and modern equipment. Microphones by Josephson, AKG, and Coles feed preamps from Ampex and Neve on their way to a Studer 827 2” tape machine before being mixed on either a Neve 5316 or Neotek Elite console patched into an Ampex ATR-102 ½” tape machine. There is no digital conversion in the signal path and Vanderslice likes it that way.

In the EarthQuaker Devices YouTube series "Show Us Your Junk! Ep. 10," John Vanderslice showcases his Klon Centaur Overdrive at Tiny Telephone Recording.

In an interview on Reverb.com, John Vanderslice discusses acquiring and using a Neve 8068 Mixing Console for his studio, Tiny Telephone Oakland. He mentions that one of the consoles was sourced from Germany and another from Los Angeles, with both units eventually coming together at The Plant in LA. Despite being unused for a decade, the console's 31102 input modules were remarkably well-preserved, appearing nearly new despite their 1976 manufacture date.

Tiny Telephone’s outboard racks are stuffed with effects, but when it’s time to get hands-on during a mix, Vanderslice patches in one of the “dozens and dozens and dozens” of EarthQuaker Devices at his disposal. “I use this at least once a record, if not more,” he says, cradling a Rainbow Machine. “Oh yeah, we’re gonna have fun.”

In Episode 10 of EarthQuaker Devices' "Show Us Your Junk," John Vanderslice showcases the EarthQuaker Devices Terminal fuzz pedal at his Tiny Telephone Recording studio.

In Episode 10 of "Show Us Your Junk!" by EarthQuaker Devices on YouTube, John Vanderslice showcases his use of the EarthQuaker Devices Organizer V2 at Tiny Telephone Recording.

In an episode of "Show Us Your Junk!" by EarthQuaker Devices, John Vanderslice discusses using the EarthQuaker Devices Disaster Transport Sr. delay pedal at his Tiny Telephone Recording studio.

The best deal was one that I totally didn’t see coming. I bought a Moog Source — the first programmable Moog — for $700 in the late ‘90s. Nowadays, that synth has a little more cachet, but at that time it was seen as kind of a loser, later-era Moog. But that synth taught me the basic architecture of a monophonic analog synth. The battery would die immediately, and it wouldn’t save sounds, but I toured with it extensively. I would put together patches on stage during the show and tell the crowd what I was doing.