Recording - July 2019 - 52

REVIEW

STL Tones STL Tonality

A Chat With Howard Benson
and Mike Plotnikoff
INTERVIEW BY
MIKE METLAY

I'd like to start by elaborating
on the impetus for creating
STL Tonality. In the introductory video on the STL Tones
website, you talked about
wanting to be able to take
your studio home with you...

Howard Benson: Well, originally, we
didn't want to create the plug-in at all.
Mike and I have tried all the plug-ins that
are out there, in Pro Tools and all the
other DAWs you can find, and we didn't
like how any of them sounded. We just
figured that was the price you pay for
having a plug-in.
A lot of people from software companies, big and small, had approached
us about this, because there's a lot of
interest in the records we've produced
over the years, for people who hear
those guitar tones and want to be able
to have them for themselves. Sonny
from STL came to me and said, "I will
work with you for as long and as hard
as I can to get this right." He has an
incredible next-level coder in Italy, and
we went through a lot of iterations of
this, and we were still not happy... until
we were happy.
When artists hire me as a producer,
I know they're going to get everything
52 RECORDING July 2019

from me and that I'm going to deliver,
and that's what I expected from Sonny.
In a way, in this case Mike and I are
the artists, and he's delivering for us!
He's totally committed to doing this stuff
right, no matter how long it takes, and
I'm really pleased with that. He went
through a bunch of programmers before
he found someone who could really do
the coding, and we're grateful for his
commitment. We really put him through
a lot! [laughs]
On our side of the process, we didn't
realize just how many notes we kept
on all the tones we'd created over the
years! We're a modern studio but we're
old-school in terms of how much documentation we'd create for every track;
it wasn't just a matter of getting a sound
and then moving on. That meant that
when it came time to get the sounds
right, we could do it-we could nail the
tones on every record we've ever done.
Between the head start we got from
those notes, and Sonny's and the programmer's willingness to go through lots
of iterations, that first time I walked into
the studio and heard it, I couldn't believe
I was hearing a plug-in! I was prepared
to be disappointed, but I really couldn't
tell a difference.

Mike Plotnikoff: Like Howard said, it
came down to the fact that we had all
our notes, so we were able to match
tones exactly for each record. We spent
a week in the studio just A/Bing between the original tracks we'd recorded
and the plug-in! It worked so well that
we decided to start with a pack of settings for the Kemper modeling amplifier,
and when that was a huge success, we
decided to take it one step further and
create a plug-in with it.
We didn't set out to create a generic guitar plug-in for a distortion or a
clean sound... we wanted our sounds,
the sounds we'd painstakingly created
for each of our recording projects, each
one unique but all ours. It took over 14
months from the initial conception to the
final result, to get it right.

Let's take a minute to go
into more technical detail
on what goes on inside the
plug-in, starting with the
stompboxes. They sound
amazing, are they modeled
from specific units or are
they more idealized signal
paths based on gear you
have in your studio?



Recording - July 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2019

Fade In
Fast Forward
That One Mic: Electric Guitar
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram: Capturing the sound of blues guitar
IK Multimedia AXE I/O
IK Multimedia iRig Stomp I/O
BOSS Waza Craft CE-2W Chorus and DC-2W Dimension C
Lauten LS-308
Strymon Volante
Vance Powell - recording and mixing the Stray Cats latest album 40
PSI Audio A17-M
STL Tones STL Tonality–Howard Benson
LEWITT LCT 040 MATCH
Throwback To The Future
GFI System Clockwork Delay V3
Recording - July 2019 - Intro
Recording - July 2019 - Cover1
Recording - July 2019 - Cover2
Recording - July 2019 - 1
Recording - July 2019 - 2
Recording - July 2019 - 3
Recording - July 2019 - Fade In
Recording - July 2019 - 5
Recording - July 2019 - 6
Recording - July 2019 - 7
Recording - July 2019 - Fast Forward
Recording - July 2019 - 9
Recording - July 2019 - 10
Recording - July 2019 - 11
Recording - July 2019 - That One Mic: Electric Guitar
Recording - July 2019 - 13
Recording - July 2019 - 14
Recording - July 2019 - 15
Recording - July 2019 - Christone "Kingfish" Ingram: Capturing the sound of blues guitar
Recording - July 2019 - 17
Recording - July 2019 - 18
Recording - July 2019 - 19
Recording - July 2019 - 20
Recording - July 2019 - 21
Recording - July 2019 - IK Multimedia AXE I/O
Recording - July 2019 - 23
Recording - July 2019 - 24
Recording - July 2019 - 25
Recording - July 2019 - IK Multimedia iRig Stomp I/O
Recording - July 2019 - 27
Recording - July 2019 - 28
Recording - July 2019 - 29
Recording - July 2019 - 30
Recording - July 2019 - 31
Recording - July 2019 - 32
Recording - July 2019 - 33
Recording - July 2019 - BOSS Waza Craft CE-2W Chorus and DC-2W Dimension C
Recording - July 2019 - 35
Recording - July 2019 - Lauten LS-308
Recording - July 2019 - 37
Recording - July 2019 - Strymon Volante
Recording - July 2019 - 39
Recording - July 2019 - Vance Powell - recording and mixing the Stray Cats latest album 40
Recording - July 2019 - 41
Recording - July 2019 - 42
Recording - July 2019 - 43
Recording - July 2019 - PSI Audio A17-M
Recording - July 2019 - 45
Recording - July 2019 - 46
Recording - July 2019 - 47
Recording - July 2019 - STL Tones STL Tonality–Howard Benson
Recording - July 2019 - 49
Recording - July 2019 - 50
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Recording - July 2019 - 57
Recording - July 2019 - 58
Recording - July 2019 - 59
Recording - July 2019 - Throwback To The Future
Recording - July 2019 - 61
Recording - July 2019 - 62
Recording - July 2019 - 63
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Recording - July 2019 - 67
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Recording - July 2019 - 69
Recording - July 2019 - LEWITT LCT 040 MATCH
Recording - July 2019 - 71
Recording - July 2019 - GFI System Clockwork Delay V3
Recording - July 2019 - Cover3
Recording - July 2019 - Cover4
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