Top 10 studio maintenance tips

For many of us it has taken years of hard work and saving to build the studio we want. Along the way we face many unforeseen hurdles. Two of the greatest are insufficient clean power from a domestic supply, and a suitable room.

But the perhaps the biggest problem arises when you have multiple pieces of equipment, a percentage of which need maintenance. One of the reasons we build studios is to create minimal barriers to getting creative. We have our gear setup exactly how we want it all the time. It is therefore intensely frustrating to have to troubleshoot failures when all we want to do is record a great idea.

Here are our top ten tips for ensuring you minimise downtime.

1. Intermittent contacts in your monitoring signal chain can have a devastating impact, especially if you complete work without realising the problem exists. Dirty contacts can create imaging and phase problems that may go unnoticed. If your studio monitors connect via 1/4" jacks, remove and clean them with isopropyl alcohol once a month. Next monitor controller you buy, check it has wire strips, XLR or Speakon connections.

2. Invest in an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) to protect your precious data from brownouts. Buy one that supports your main studio computer and any external drives you have.

3. Run a disk check utility one a month and repair any FAT and permissions errors it encounters. Many modern OS's perform these functions when asleep at night, but you may power down your studio DAW and it may never get a chance to repair itself.

4. If you have digital hardware synths and processors check backup battery status and replace if necessary. Take a note of the dates and add a calendar event to your diary to remind you to check again in 5 years. Then perform a MIDI systems exclusive dump to your DAW.

5. If you have a critical fader or pot that is crackly, such as your master monitor volume control, replace it immediately. Don't try to clean it just replace it.

6. Power up any gear you have not used in the last 6 months and turn every control on it back and forth a few times. The grease in potentiometers and faders can coragulate and movement can help prevent it.

7. Power up any external backup hard drives you use for archiving and let them spin for a few minutes. Read and write a file to them. They use grease on their spindles too.

8. Dust your gear. Dust is the enemy of pots and faders. Buy a small paintbrush and use it to brush dust towards the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.

9. If you are lucky enough to own a ribbon microphone store it upright. If you lie it on its side the ribbon motor can sag, spoiling performance.

10. Stay hygienic. Ill health is always an unwelcome interruption. Clean your keyboard, mouse, pots, faders and control surfaces regular with anti-bacteria wipes. You can remove fader caps and pots, place them in a bowl of warm water mixed with a little bleach and leave them for a hour.

Perhaps you have a suggestion for something we've missed? Let us know.

Thanks for watching and reading.
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You already have enough gear!

This week one of our team came to the earth shattering conclusion that he didn't need any more gear in his home studio. His wish list had dwindled to zero.

He had been buying equipment since the early 1980s starting with a 4-track port-a-studio and then moving on to 1/4" 8-track, 1/2" 16-track, ADAT and finally a Mac system with Pro Tools. But as his income had increased (he runs a small recruitment company) outboard gear that was once unaffordable had been purchased and every unattainable piece of gear he had ever wanted was now sitting in his rack.

Understand that his wishes were modest, a Lexicon PCM91 rather than 480, a TK Audio stereo equaliser rather than a GML, and an affordable Neumann mic rather than a U47. Yes he has a few choice pieces, a Dangerous Music compressor, a Rupert Neve eq and some expensive monitors, but a relentless upgrade cycle that had lasted 30 years had hit the buffers. Why?

The simple answer was that he had come to accept that his equipment was not the limiting factor in the recordings he wants to make. He is the limiting factor. His skills, his knowledge, his creativity, and the decisions he makes every time he arranges, records and mixes a piece of music.

It is true that the thrill of a new purchase was a thrill no more. Unpacking, installing, reading the manual and learning how to get the best from a new piece of gear had become a chore, but only because he knew it was unlikely to make his music and recordings any better.

So he has decided to put the money he would have spent on new gear to better use. He's buying himself more free time so he can practice his keyboard playing, work on his engineering skills and improve his decision making processes.

We know he's right (but us gear junkies still hate him for it!).

Thanks for reading and watching.
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