THE PARLOUR RECORDING STUDIOS, NORTHANTS

The Parlour Studios in Kettering, Northamptonshire, is a spacious, acoustically designed recording studio with a 420 sq ft live room offering recording services, online mixing, mastering and rehearsals to a wide range of clients. Previously known as Puretones, the studios were originally established back in 2000, in a tiny space near Kettering, with very limited equipment. However, they quickly found favour with a number of bands, prompting studio owner/producer/engineer Neil Haynes to start looking for bigger premises. We caught up with Neil this month and asked him to tell us more about the studios and how he came to set up at their current location in Glendon Lodge Farm.

In 2003, after months of searching for the right space, I was driving past this old farm in Kettering and decided to knock on the door to see if they had any buildings we could use. It turned out the owner was a lovely man who was really into music and he kindly agreed to let us convert the old milking parlour into studios – which is how The Parlour was born.” That was 13 years ago, and a lot has changed since then. Russ (Russell), a local producer who was spending a lot of time travelling to various studios around the country, and even abroad, decided to look for somewhere closer to home where he could work. He came to The Parlour to do some quick demos and liked the vibe so much he ended up installing some of his gear there.”

Russ explained The Parlour was a really cool place to work, and once I’d brought my gear in and upgraded a few things it gradually became my “go to” studio. Then a few years later Neil and I decided to make it official and went into partnership, continuing to improve the facility and the gear until it became what it is now, a real heavy-weight pro studio but at an affordable price, able to deliver world class records without artists having to break the bank.”

The studio was originally designed by Neil with help from online forums, but over the years he and Russ have made a lot of modifications. “We have a decent sized control room and a pretty large live room able to accommodate large groups of musicians so we’ve spent a lot of time tuning the acoustics in both rooms; we added a stone wall, a mirror wall and built a store room onto the side of the live room that acts as a reverb chamber enabling a “big room” drum sound.

“The acoustics in the live room are world-class and this makes a huge difference to the quality of the recorded sound. In the lively end of the room, drums sound huge and vibrant whilst the dead end provides a more intimate sound. We also have some moveable gobos to tailor the acoustics for the required effect. The room is completely isolated from the control room, isolation booth and the outside world. It also features a fully floating wood floor, fresh air replacement and excellent sight lines to the control room and isolation booth.

“We’ve also totally refurbished and rewired the control room. We bought an Audient ASP8024 72 channel console, a new Pro Tools HD3 rig, and then we added more toys to the already impressive racks of analogue outboard. We are on an eternal quest for good monitoring and we have changed monitors many times, recently settling on PMCs, Unity and NHT monitors. Full equipment list here.

“Last but not least, we added a lounge / living space to give artists somewhere to chill as well as give people the option of staying over if they’re working late or live too far away. We don’t have the biggest premises by any means but all this helps us keep the costs down so we can be affordable to more acts. The combination of great rooms and equipment enables us to compete with even the biggest of studios.”