portrait

In 1981, I left United/Western Studios in Hollywood to start my own business. I began by amassing thousands of transistors and IC’s, resistors and capacitors, along with stranger items like fish paper, bicycle grease, shim stock, and silver paint — the stuff you needed to maintain a studio back then!

With everything packed into a Volkswagen Rabbit, I sent mailers out and soon found myself with a packed appointment book. In a typical week I might modify a console for Supertramp, have an emergency call at Larry Carlton’s house, install a multitrack for Devo, and wire a cue system at NBC.

The big installations came. SSL, Neve, Trident and Soundcraft desks were going in all over town, and many of those projects were ours. Before long, it seemed that every block in downtown Hollywood had one or two studios, along with half the big homes up in the hills.

Just as the studio scene became saturated, synthesizer technology exploded. Suddenly we were installing huge synth and sampler systems for composers and sound
designers.

In the last few years, video suites and post rooms have accounted for about half of our work. In the audio tracking and mixing rooms, the transition to digital gear and nonlinear recording has been astonishing. We’re seeing projects with no outboard equipment and minimal analog gear. Things have changed dramatically in the last ten years! But we’ll still renovate an SSL, repair a Pultec, or service a tape deck, if that’s what you need.

David Kulka, Founder