History of The Lab Studios - cont.
It was about this time that Bill started his own music instrument shop, the now legendary 'Bungalow Bills Music Shop'. It was now time for a home for The Lab, and in 1986 a new studio was built in Symonds Street in the warehouse at the back of the shop. Here, Greg Johnson, Strawpeople, Chris Knox, ITV, Coka Nostra, Rhythm Cage, Dribbling Darts, MC OJ and Rhythm Slave, Larry Killip, Hallelujah Picasso's, The Warner's, Urban Disturbance and a young Garageland came to make their history. Cliff and The Shadows made the most of their rehearsal time at The Lab while in NZ.The addition of a large Soundtracks mixing desk in 1989 was a major purchase for The Lab. As was the 2' 24 track Otari machine in November 1994. Around that time we were also using Roland's first 8-track digital recorder. In 1991 Bill started his own record label that became known as Deepgrooves. Within The Lab version 4.00 basement of the Crystal Palace Theatre Mt Eden Rd. 2 years later he handed it over to the 2 guys he'd invited in to market and produce records. With the development of Symonds Street block to make way for development, The Lab was forced into a somewhat fortuitous move, the perfect space was found underneath The Crystal Palace Movie theatre in Mt Eden, and in 1998 Bill, his mate St. Brian Smith and a host of cool guys began the building of The Lab 4.0.
A partnership between College Hill and Lab Studios arose in the year 2000, spawning a wealth of upgrades and improvements that have continued to this day. Today a simple unlabelled door belies the entrance to one of Auckland's premier studios, which is well equipped with the latest in digital and analogue format recording gear. The digital suite consists of a 24ch in/out Protools HD2 Accel system with apogee converters, allowing compatibility with other studios from around the world. For those preferring analogue recording an Otari mk2 2" tape machine is still on hand. The control room possesses an impressive array of outboard equipment including Lexicon and Yamaha reverbs, DBX and Drawmer compressors/limiters and 3 different Roland tape machines.
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