In recent years, Pete Huttlinger has emerged as one of the finest fingerstyle guitarists in the USA. After graduating from Boston’s Berklee College of Music in 1984, he moved to Nashville and began doing sessions. In the early ’90s, he joined John Denver’s touring and recording band, and played with the singer until Denver’s untimely death. In 2000, Huttlinger won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas, and soon after released a self-produced solo album, Naked Pop. When Steve Vai heard this debut, he invited Huttlinger to Los Angeles to re-record the entire project live in Vai’s Mothership studio. Released in 2002 by Favored Nations, the album offers stunning solo guitar arrangements of songs by the Beatles, Steely Dan, and Stevie Wonder, sometimes enhanced with symphonic strings.

To track his second album, The Santa Rita Connection (Instar), Huttlinger decided to build a personal studio in his Nashville log cabin home. The positive response to the vibrant sound of his self-recorded Collings OM-1 prompted Huttlinger to expand his studio and repeat the home-brew process for his latest effort, Things Are Looking Up (Instar).

This summer, as Huttlinger was preparing to head for Chicago to play at Eric Clapton’s 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival, I visited his studio to find out what it takes to record commercially viable music at home.

What equipment do you need to make pro-quality recordings at home?
Huttlinger Professional sound starts with the microphone—you’ve got to have a great mic. But if you don’t have a great mic preamp, you’re getting only half your mic’s tonal quality. So they’re both essential.

Tell us about your mics.
Huttlinger I like Neumann mics for recording acoustic guitar. I have a wonderful pair of vintage KM 254 tube condensers and a pair of KM 84 condensers. The 84s have a beautifully clear, detailed sound. Because of the tubes, the 254s are a little warmer, and I wind up using them the most. Having a pair of a particular mic lets you record a guitar in stereo, which is a key consideration.

I also have an Audio Technica 4033a, a great all-round mic with a broad range and very open sound. I use it for vocals, or when I want to get a slightly brighter sound from my guitar or mandolin. My other vocal mic is a Shure KSM44 large-diaphragm condenser. Like everyone else on the planet, I use a [Shure] SM57 dynamic for miking guitar amps. Finally, I use a CAD 95 condenser for percussion instruments.

What about mic preamps?
Huttlinger When I was expanding and upgrading my studio recently, I did my own mic preamp shootout. I rented a Neve 1073 and a boutique Brent Avrill, and also borrowed a Vintech Audio X81 from Gary Paczosa, the ace engineer known for his work with Alison Krauss and Union Station, the Dixie Chicks, Nickel Creek, and Patty Griffin. It was Gary who insisted I hear the X81.

I compared these preamps to my Universal Audio 2-610, which is a two-channel, tube mic preamp. The Neve was absolutely unbelievable, but the Vintech sounded just as good—I even thought the low end was a little clearer—for about half the price. So I got a pair of X81s to go along with my 2-610, which I haven’t used much for guitars lately because it sounds a little dark. Instead, I’ll use the 2-610 to give some tube warmth to a mandolin or as a superb bass DI. But my main setup is a Neumann mic into an X81 pre—that combination is truly awesome.

What else is in your rack?
Huttlinger A DOD SR460H headphone amp and a Monster Pro 2500 power supply. I have two digital multi-effects processors in the rack, but I never use them. I keep the signal path very simple: mic into preamp into my digital audio workstation.

Which is what?
Huttlinger It’s a Pro Tools LE system, consisting of an eight-channel Digi 002 FireWire mixer/control surface, an Apple iMac G5, and several 160-GB hard drives. I run two outs from the 002 to my HR824 Mackie powered monitors. Before that I had passive Tannoy monitors and a power amp, but I just love these Mackies. It took all of 30 seconds to get used to their sound.

Did you choose Pro Tools to be compatible with other studios?
Huttlinger Not really. Most people are recording their tracks as WAV files, which you can import into all the leading recording software programs, so compatibility isn’t really an issue. I chose Pro Tools because it does everything I need for recording acoustic music, but I’ve noticed most of my keyboard-playing friends use more MIDI-oriented programs, such as Digital Performer, Cubase, or Logic. We trade WAV files back and forth all the time without any hassle. I use Pro Tools’ Consolidate command to unify all the little pieces of edited audio in a track, and give all the tracks identical starting and ending points. This makes it easy for people to line up the tracks and maintain the correct timing between the instruments when they import my audio files into their software.

Your new studio has two rooms. How important is it to separate your mixing and editing space from your tracking area? Huttlinger For several years I used a single room for everything, which is how I recorded The Santa Rita Connection. The problem is that when you have one room, the computer, hard drives, and monitors are all in the same space as your mics. Because computer gear can be noisy—the hard drive fans, for example—I had to close-mic my instruments to avoid having these sounds get on the tracks. Having two rooms lets me separate the noisy gear from the mics, which I can now place farther from the guitar to get a more natural room sound. Also, having two rooms lets me more easily record other musicians. I can engineer in one room while someone else plays in the other, and this has increased my business as a result.

But how do you record yourself in a two-room setup?
Huttlinger I have a second computer monitor in the tracking room, as well as a wireless mouse and keyboard. This auxiliary system lets me operate Pro Tools from afar and see everything I’m recording. It’s funny, when I had one room I was always dashing back and forth between the mic and my Pro Tools rig, which I’d put at opposite ends of the room to minimize noise. But thanks to this wireless setup, now I can just sit still and play. If I make a mistake, I don’t have to get up to delete the track and reset the recorder, and this has reduced my recording time by at least half. When tracking, I monitor with headphones, but I do all my editing in the other room, with the Mackies turned up really loud.

Your tracking room has sonic treatment on several walls. Did you do this yourself?
Huttlinger Yes. I started with panels of Owens Corning 703 rigid fiberglass insulation, which I sprayed with glue and covered with medium-weight fabric. I attached strips of wood along the walls, and then screwed the panels onto the strips so that there’s about an inch of space between the panels and the walls. This space helps to control the low frequencies. Using the same materials, I also made bass traps that fit diagonally into the room corners.

Talking with other studio owners and studying books like Building a Recording Studio by Jeff Cooper (Synergy Group), I learned it’s good to have a treated wall facing one that’s not, so you have both reflecting and absorbing surfaces. In my tracking room, the two treated walls form an L-shape in relation to the untreated walls. After putting up the wall treatment and bass traps, I spent several days moving the mics around and recording in different parts of the room to find the sweet spot. I also built bass traps for the control room.

How has your studio provided new business opportunities?
Huttlinger Thanks to the Internet, I’m doing quite a bit of long-distance session work. People contact me through my website (www.petehuttlinger.com), and after we discuss the project and agree on the terms, they send me a two-track mix of their song, along with a click track. Based on their requests, I add guitar parts and return the Pro Tools session to them. We use FTP sites for uploading and downloading the tracks.

What tips do you have for musicians who want to make commercial recordings at home?
Huttlinger Music recorded at home is often built up one instrument at a time. Typically, I’ll start by recording a click track and my guitar, and then have a percussionist, bassist, and keyboard player come in and layer their parts on top of that. This is convenient, but by the time everything is layered, the music can also sound pieced together. I’ve discovered that if at the end of this process I go back and re-record my guitar parts over the ensemble tracks—which didn’t exist when I initially recorded my guitar—I get a much better groove and the music feels more natural. And speaking of natural sound, it’s good to look for ways to control your tone other than reaching for the EQ knobs. For example, I love playing my Chris Bozung Model J dreadnought with medium-gauge strings—it sounds huge. But that volume gets a bit overbearing for the mics, so for tracking I’ll switch to light strings and the guitar records like a dream.

NIX THE MIX?
Unlike many home-recording guitarists, Huttlinger doesn’t mix his own tracks. “I’ve been so immersed in the music from the very first note of writing it that I really want to get someone else involved,” he says. “There are people who mix all day, every day. Why not employ them and benefit from their years of experience? By hiring a mix engineer, I get fresh ears, different gear, and a different room—a whole new perspective on the music.”