Segall’s new album “Hello, Hi” sounds just like Southern California. A heady mix of sun-drenched folk and exuberant psych-rock, it materialized at his home-based Harmonizer Studio—a brimming lab where vintage and custom outboard gear, 2" tape, a classic top-end microphone, and plenty of coffee helped fuel his giddy return to the acoustic guitar.
On a much-needed break from the first leg of his current tour with his road-tested Freedom Band, Ty Segall takes a seat in his mood-lit studio control room, mug of hot java in hand, and looks around with a visible expression of what can only be described as wonder. “You know, to have my own place to work on stuff is just pure joy,” he says. “I’m often like, ‘How did this even happen?’ It’s a great place to hone my skills and to get weird ideas going, with no pressure. The clock’s not running. We’re not burning a budget here. You get to do whatever you want. It’s just totally insane.”
Segall has made a career out of being prolific, so it was probably inevitable that he’d pool his resources into designing the three-room complex he calls Harmonizer, named for the album it spawned after he put the finishing touches on the studio build-out, completed in early 2021 at his home in the Santa Monica Mountains just outside Los Angeles. Compact but state-of-the-art, Harmonizer not only stands as testament to the long hours Segall has logged on his way to becoming an A-list producer, but it also plays a key role as an instrument in Segall’s arsenal that’s just as crucial to his sound as his trusty Travis Bean TB1000S or, more recently, his vintage Martin D-35 acoustic.
Ty Segall "Hello, Hi" (Official Visualizer)
Title track from "Hello, Hi", available on LP/CS/CD on July 22, 2022 from Drag City.Preorder now:https://ffm.to/tyhellohiAll three figured prominently, in fact, into the making of “Hello, Hi”—Segall’s latest studio realization of what he calls a “back to basics” album. “It was about coming back to the acoustic guitar, to be honest,” he clarifies. “I think a lot of the records I make have to do with my relationship to songwriting at that time. And I hadn’t really played the acoustic or written on it since probably Freedom’s Goblin, which at this point is maybe five years ago. So, to me it was really like falling back in love with the acoustic guitar. It was a very nice experience to have.”
If there’s a modern California sound—a throwback to the late-’60s Laurel Canyon “freak folk” vibes of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and many more, but infused with a wild and rambunctious onslaught of psychedelic garage rock—then Segall’s music radiates it, and “Hello, Hi” might be the closest he comes to creating a West Coast “concept album” without openly admitting it.
From the lovely waking dissonance and pastoral colors of songs like “Good Morning,” “Blue,” and “Looking at You” to the thick, hard-knocking grooves of the title track and the sublime coda, “Distraction,” Segall touches on themes of reflection and connection that feel immediate, palpable, and deeply moving. It can be a bit of a nostalgia trip, but he pulls off the balancing act with well-wrought songs that convey a sense of longing without a trace of schmaltzy artifice.
“You know, to have my own place to work on stuff is just pure joy. “I’m often like, ‘How did this even happen?’”
At the heart of that authenticity is the Martin, which inspired Segall not only to write with renewed vigor, but also spurred him to get his hands on a microphone that could do it justice. “For all the records that I’ve done, I try to get one piece of gear, and that’s the expense of the record,” he explains. “This one was pretty crazy. I got a [Neumann] U67. That’s basically the guitar sound on the whole record.”
Among studio heads, the U67 is a legendary, and legendarily expensive, microphone that has been central to the sound of classic albums from the ’60s and ’70s, perhaps most notably Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. The mic can harness a huge arc of low end without distorting, but it can also preserve an elusive and intimate “proximity effect” on vocals and acoustic instruments that has made it one of the most desirable, and essential, pieces of gear in any major studio.
“I couldn’t help myself with the wild-style production move on that one. You know, you’re at the restaurant and you’re like, ‘Ah fuck it, I’ll get the lobster!’”
The album’s closing suite of songs, beginning with the whimsically titled “Saturday (Part 1),” probably best signifies how Segall was able to use the U67 to his advantage. The opening acoustic filigree and Segall’s hypnotic vocal combine to recall vestiges of White Album-era Beatles, but with a startling presence and stereo imaging that creates a real under-the-skin sensation.
“Saturday (Part 2)” brings in the Freedom Band’s Charles Moothart on drums and Mikal Cronin on saxophone, with Segall on bass and electric guitar, gradually stoking a psychedelic heat that would take the Doors to task. When Cronin crashes into the mix with a horn solo that consists of two stacked takes, the in-your-face blast suddenly elevates the song to a completely different level.
Ty Segall’s Harmonizer Studio Gear
“The clock’s not running. We’re not burning a budget here. You get to do whatever you want. It’s just totally insane,” says Ty Segall about working in his own studio.
Photo by Denée Segall
Guitars
- Late-’70s Travis Bean TB1000S (tuned to D standard)
- ’69 Les Paul
- Vintage Martin D-35
- Gibson B-25 (for live shows)
- ’68 Gibson EB-0 bass
Amps
- Fender Quad Reverb
Effects
- Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz
- Death by Audio Apocalypse, Fuzz War, and Octave Clang
- DOD Performer Flanger 575
- Electro-Harmonix Nano Small Stone
- Electro-Harmonix Sovtek Deluxe Big Muff Pi
- Moog Minifooger MF Delay
- Roland Space Echo RE-201
- Univox Super-Fuzz
Studio Console & Select Outboard Gear
Trident 88 Console (“Hello, Hi” was tracked on Segall’s TAC Scorpion Console, now retired)
Studer 2" tape machine (circa mid-’80s)
Ampex 351 Preamps (vintage)
Antelope Audio Orion 32 AD/DA audio interface
Electrical Audio EAPreQ
Eventide H949 Harmonizer (four units)
Highland Dynamics BG2 compressors
Normaphone custom preamps (designed by Greg Norman at Electrical Audio)
SPL Transient Designer
Universal Audio Classic 1176 Compressor (vintage)
Strings & Picks
- .011-gauge strings
- .88 mm picks (no preferred brand for either)
“I couldn’t help myself with the wild-style production move on that one,” Segall jokes. “You know, you’re at the restaurant and you’re like, ‘Ah fuck it, I’ll get the lobster!’ It was fun, and Mikal just obviously rips. He came over to the studio for maybe an hour, and after it I was like, ‘Amazing dude, thank you!’”
It’s worth mentioning here that Segall records almost obsessively to 2" tape, which lends another layer of analog thickness to “Hello, Hi” that isn’t easy to reproduce with a strictly digital setup (although he has recently started transitioning to hybrid digital-analog recording). “I demo on tape, which is insane,” he reveals, “but I do like the idea of burning over something if it’s not good. For me, keeping something bad is just a waste of tape. If there’s a cool idea there, rip a shitty mix to the computer so you have it, and then roll over it. I don’t want to be the kind of studio that has 50 reels just stacked in a corner, you know?”
Tape saturation plays a role in the Led Zeppelin II-like sound of the album’s closer, “Distraction,” which features Moothart channeling the ghost of John Bonham on drums, but the real secret sauce boils down to Segall’s ability to adapt as an engineer and producer.
Ty Segall’s Harmonizer Studio was named after his 2021 album, which he was inspired to make after building out a three-room recording space in his home in the Santa Monica Mountains. Note his MVP Neumann U67 at center.
Photo by Denée Segall
“Like the rest of the record, as far as the writing went, it was a coffee-in-the-morning thing,” he says. “After the acoustic demo, I did the first version with Charles, and it sounded big and electric, but I miked the drums wrong and the room treatment was wrong, so I had to start from scratch.”
Moothart’s drum kit was set up in Harmonizer’s isolation room, which Segall retreated by adding more sound-deadening panels and stripping down the microphone scheme. “I just re-miked everything in a simpler way, and then I cooled off on the compression and EQ because I thought it would be a better vibe to not be so heavy-handed. And that was when I got my Trident [mixing console]. I took a whole day to mix it, which you don’t get in studios when you’re paying for time. So that song has three versions out there. That’s not rare for me. Some have three or four, because I’m constantly looking to redo something if it’s not right.”
This Trident 88 Console is a new acquisition to Ty Segall’s Harmonizer Studio. “Hello, Hi” was tracked on a TAC Scorpion Console, which Segall has since retired.
Photo by Denée Segall
Segall held to simplicity when recording his beloved Travis Bean TB1000S, which he always routes through a beat-up Fender Quad Reverb. He comes back to the album’s moshpit-ready title song as an example. “I just felt like the record needed one ripper, so I picked that one and it worked,” he says.
“For me, keeping something bad is just a waste of tape. If there’s a cool idea there, rip a shitty mix to the computer so you have it, and then roll over it. I don’t want to be the kind of studio that has 50 reels just stacked in a corner, you know?”
He added a Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz to the signal chain, giving the guitar an explosive sound that comes very close to peeling paint at the volume Segall usually plays. “That’s the U67 on almost everything except the bass. I mean, I have to say it again, that mic just makes it so easy to record the guitar. I always do the hand trick, where you spread out your fingers and place it about a hand’s width away from the speaker. Source and signal are not gonna hurt that mic—just turn it up and there it is. I think I used my Ampex for the mic preamp, but that’s it.”
A Martin D-35 inspired Ty Segall not only to write with renewed vigor, but also spurred him to get his hands on a microphone that could do it justice. “The U67 really just changed the feeling of everything,” he says. “I always ended up going back to pointing it at the 12th fret, usually somewhere between six-to-eight inches away.”
Photo by Denée Segall
“Hello, Hi” is Segall’s 14th album in an unbroken stretch of feverish creativity that began in 2008 with his self-titled debut—an ultra-raw slab of sinewy protopunk surf garage that still holds its charms, but Segall is in a completely different headspace now.
“Sure, you know, it always feels great to get the sound you’re looking for,” he says. “Even though I just wanted to keep this one classic, I feel like there’s always a question mark until a record is out, and until you have time away from it. When I was fully finished with it, I wasn’t sure, but now that I’ve had some time apart from it, it is what it is. And I really love what it is.”
We’d still love to call it the first wave of a new California sound, but maybe that’s best left to the producer, too, until next time.
Ty Segall & Freedom Band - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)
Stompboxtober is rolling on! Enter below for your chance to WIN today's featured pedal from Peterson Tuners! Come back each day during the month of October for more chances to win!
Peterson StroboStomp Mini Pedal Tuner
The StroboStomp Mini delivers the unmatched 0.1 cent tuning accuracy of all authentic Peterson Strobe Tuners in a mini pedal tuner format. We designed StroboStomp Mini around the most requested features from our customers: a mini form factor, and top mounted jacks. |
Wonderful array of weird and thrilling sounds can be instantly conjured. All three core settings are colorful, and simply twisting the time, span, and filter dials yields pleasing, controllable chaos. Low learning curve.
Not for the faint-hearted or unimaginative. Mode II is not as characterful as DBA and EQD settings.
$199
EarthQuaker Devices/Death By Audio Time Shadows
earthquakerdevices.com
This joyful noisemaker can quickly make you the ringmaster of your own psychedelic circus, via creative delays, raucous filtering, and easy-to-use, highly responsive controls.
I love guitar chaos, from the expressionist sound-painting of Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” to the clean, clever skronk ’n’ melody of Derek Bailey to the slide guitar fantasias of Sonny Sharrock to the dark, molten eruptions of Sunn O))). When I was just getting a grip on guitar, my friends and I would spend eight-hour days exploring feedback and twisted riffage, to see what we might learn about pushing guitar tones past the conventional.
So, pedals that are Pandora’s boxes of weirdness appeal to me. My two current favorites are my Mantic Flex Pro, a series of filter controls linked to a low-frequency oscillator, and my Pigtronix Mothership 2, a stompbox analog synth. But the Time Shadows II Subharmonic Multi-Delay Resonator is threatening their favored status—or at least demanding a third chair. This collaboration between Death By Audio and EarthQuaker Devices is a wonderful, gnarly little box of noise and fun that—unlike the two pedals I just mentioned—is easy to dial in and adjust on the fly, creating appealing and odd sounds at every turn.
Behind the Wall of Sound
Unlike the Mantic Flex Pro, the Time Shadows is consistent. You can plug the Mantic into the same rig, and that rig into the same outlet, every day, and there are going to be slight—or big—differences in the sound. Those differences are even less predictable on different stages and in different rooms. The Time Shadows, besides its operating consistency, has six user-programmable presets. They write with a single touch of the button in the center of the device’s tough, aluminum 4 3/4" x 2 1/2" x 2 1/4" shell. Inside that shell live ghosts, wind, and unicorns that blow raspberries on cue and more or less on key. EQD and DBA explain these “presences” differently, relating that the Time Shadow’s circuitry combines three delay voices (EQD, II, and DBA) with filters, fuzz, phasing, shimmer, swell, and subharmonics. There’s also an input for an expression pedal, which is great for making the Time Shadows’ more radical sounds voice-like and lending dynamic control. But sustaining a tone sweeping the time, span, and filter dials manually is rewarding on its own, producing a Strickfaden lab’s worth of swirling, sweeping, and dipping sounds.
Guitar Tone from Roswell
Because of the wide variety of sounds, swirls, and shimmers the Time Shadows produces, I found it best to play through a pair of combos in stereo, so the full range of, say, high notes cascading downwards and dropping pitch as they repeat, could be appreciated in their full dimensionality. (That happens in DBA mode, with the time and span at 10 and 4 o’clock respectively, with the filter also at 4, and it’s magical.) The pedal also stands up well to fuzz and overdrives whether paired with humbucker, P-90, or single-coil guitars.
I loved all three modes, but the more radical EQD and DBA positions are especially excellent. The EQD side piles dirt on the incoming signal, adds sub-octave shimmer, and is delayed just before hitting the filters. Keeping the filter function low lends alligator growls to sustained barre chords, and single notes transform into orchestral strings or brass turf, with a soft attack. Pushing the span dial high creates kaleidoscopes of sound. The Death By Audio mode really hones in on the pedal’s delay characteristics, creating crisp repeats and clean sounds with a little less midrange in the filtering, but lending the ability to cut through a mix at volume. The II mode is comparatively clean, and the filter control becomes a mix dial for the delayed signal.
The Verdict
The closest delay I’ve found comparable to the Time Shadows is Red Panda’s function-rich Particle 2 granular delay and pitch-shifter, which also uses filtering, among other tricks. But that pedal has a very deep menu of functions, with a larger learning curve. If you like to expect the unexpected, and you want it now, the Time Shadows supports crafting a wide variety of cool, surprising sounds fast. And that’s fun. The challenge will be working the Time Shadows’ cascading aural whirlpools and dinosaur choirs into song arrangements, but I heard how the pedal could be used to create unique, wonderful pads or bellicose solos after just a few minutes of playing. If you’d like to easily sidestep the ordinary, you might find spelunking the Time Shadows’ cavernous possibilities worthwhile.
This little pedal offers three voices—analog, tape, and digital—and faithfully replicates the highlights of all three, with minimal drawbacks.
Faithful replications of analog and tape delays. Straightforward design.
Digital voice can feel sterile.
$119
Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay
fishman.com
As someone who was primarily an acoustic guitarist for the first 16 out of 17 years that I’ve been playing, I’m relatively new to the pedal game. That’s not saying I’m new to effects—I’ve employed a squadron of them generously on acoustic tracks in post-production, but rarely in performance. But I’m discovering that a pedalboard, particularly for my acoustic, offers the amenities and comforts of the hobbit hole I dream of architecting for myself one day in the distant future.
But by gosh, if delay—and its sister effect, reverb—haven’t always been perfect for the music I like to write and play. Which brings us to the Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay. The EchoBack, along with the standard delay controls of level, time, and repeats—as well as a tap tempo—has a toggle to alternate between analog, tape, and digital-delay voices.
I hooked up my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante to my Blues Junior to give the EchoBack a test run. We love a medium delay—my usual preference for delay settings is to have both level and repeats at 1 o’clock, and time at 11 o’clock. With the analog voice switched on, I heard some pillowy warmth in the processed signal, as well as a familiar degradation with each repeat—until their wake gave way to a gentle, distant, crinkly ticking. Staying on analog and adjusting delay time down to 8 o’clock and repeats to about 11:30, some cozy slapback enveloped my rendition of Johnny Marr’s part to “Back to the Old House,” conjuring up thoughts of Elvis trapped in a small chamber, but in a good way. It sounded indubitably authentic. The one drawback of analog delay for me, generally, is that its roundness can feel a bit under water at times.
Switching over to tape, that pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top. With the settings at the medium-length mode listed above, I could see the empty, glass hall the pedal sent my sound bouncing down. I heard several pronounced pings of repeats before the signal fully faded out. On slapback settings (time at 8 o’clock, repeats at 11:30), rather than Elvis, I heard something more along the lines of a honky-tonk mic in a glass bottle. Still relatively crystalline, which actually was not my favorite. I like a bit more crinkle—so maybe analog is my bag....“That pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear, pristine replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top.”
Next up, digital. Here we have the brightest voice, and as expected, the most faithful repeats. They ping just a few times before shifting to a smooth, single undulating wave. When putting its slapback hat on, I found that the effect was a bit less alluring than I’d observed for the analog and tape voices. This is where the digital delay felt a little too sterile, with the cleanly preserved signal feeling a bit unnatural.
All in all, I dig the EchoBack for its replications of analog and tape voices, and ultimately, lean towards tape. While it’s nice having the digital delay there as an option, it feels a bit too clean when meddling with time of any given length. Nonetheless, this is surely a handy stomp for any acoustic player looking to venture into the land of live effects, or for those who are already there.
A silicon Fuzz Face-inspired scorcher.
Hot silicon Fuzz Face tones with dimension and character. Sturdy build. Better clean tones than many silicon Fuzz Face clones.
Like all silicon Fuzz Faces, lacks dynamic potential relative to germanium versions.
$229
JAM Fuzz Phrase Si
jampedals.com
Everyone has records and artists they indelibly associate with a specific stompbox. But if the subject is the silicon Fuzz Face, my first thought is always of David Gilmour and the Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii film. What you hear in Live at Pompeii is probably shaped by a little studio sweetening. Even still, the fuzz you hear in “Echoes” and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”—well, that is how a fuzz blaring through a wall of WEM cabinets in an ancient amphitheater should sound, like the sky shredded by the wail of banshees. I don’t go for sounds of such epic scale much lately, but the sound of Gilmour shaking those Roman columns remains my gold standard for hugeness.
JAM’s Fuzz Phrase Fuzz Face homage is well-known to collectors in its now very expensive and discontinued germanium version, but this silicon variation is a ripper. If you love Gilmour’s sustaining, wailing buzzsaw tone in Pompeii, you’ll dig this big time. But its ’66 acid-punk tones are killer, too, especially if you get resourceful with guitar volume and tone. And while it can’t match its germanium-transistor-equipped equivalent for dynamic response to guitar volume and tone settings or picking intensity, it does not have to operate full-tilt to sound cool. There are plenty of overdriven and near-clean tones you can get without ever touching the pedal itself.
Great Grape! It’s Purple JAM, Man!
Like any Fuzz Face-style stomp worth its fizz, the Fuzz Phrase Si is silly simple. The gain knob generally sounds best at maximum, though mellower settings make clean sounds easier to source. The output volume control ranges to speaker-busting zones. But there’s also a cool internal bias trimmer that can summon thicker or thin and raspy variations on the basic voice, which opens up the possibility of exploring more perverse fuzz textures. The Fuzz Phrase Si’s pedal-to-the-metal tones—with guitar volume and pedal gain wide open—bridge the gap between mid-’60s buzz and more contemporary-sounding silicon fuzzes like the Big Muff. And guitar volume attenuation summons many different personalities from the Fuzz Phrase Si—from vintage garage-psych tones with more note articulation and less sustain (great for sharp, punctuated riffs) as well as thick overdrive sounds.
If you’re curious about Fuzz Face-style circuits because of the dynamic response in germanium versions, the Fuzz Phrase Si performs better in this respect than many other silicon variations, though it won’t match the responsiveness of a good germanium incarnation. For starters, the travel you have to cover with a guitar volume knob to get tones approaching “clean” (a very relative term here) is significantly greater than that required by a good germanium Fuzz Face clone, which will clean up with very slight guitar volume adjustments. This makes precise gain management with guitar controls harder. And in situations where you have to move fast, you may be inclined to just switch the pedal off rather than attempt a dirty-to-clean shift with the guitar volume.
“The best clean-ish tones come via humbuckers and a high-headroom amp with not too much midrange, which makes a PAF-and-black-panel-Fender combination a great fit.”
The best clean-ish tones come via humbuckers and a high-headroom amp with not too much midrange, which makes a PAF-and-black-panel-Fender combination a great fit if you’re out to extract maximum dirty-to-clean range. You don’t need to attenuate your guitar volume as much with the PAF/black-panel tandem, and you can get pretty close to bypassed tone if you reduce picking intensity and/or switch from flatpick to fingers and nails. Single-coil pickups make such maneuvers more difficult. They tend to get thin in a less-than-ideal way before they shake the dirt, and they’re less responsive to the touch dynamics that yield so much range with PAFs. If you’re less interested in thick, clean tones, though, single-coils are a killer match for the Fuzz Phrase Si, yielding Yardbirds-y rasp, quirky lo-fi fuzz, and dirty overdrive that illuminates chord detail without sacrificing attitude. Pompeii tones are readily attainable via a Stratocaster and a high-headroom Fender amp, too, when you maximize guitar volume and pedal gain. And with British-style amps those same sounds turn feral and screaming, evoking Jimi’s nastiest.
The Verdict
Like every JAM pedal I’ve ever touched, the JAM Fuzz Phrase Si is built with care that makes the $229 price palatable. Cheaper silicon Fuzz Face clones may be easy to come by, but I’m hard-pressed to think they’ll last as long or as well as the Greece-made Fuzz Phrase Si. Like any silicon Fuzz Face-inspired design, what you gain in heat, you trade in dynamics. But the Si makes the best of this trade, opening a path to near-clean tones and many in-between gain textures, particularly if you put PAFs and a scooped black-panel Fender amp in the mix. And if streamlining is on your agenda, this fuzz’s combination of simplicity, swagger, and style means paring down pedals and controls doesn’t mean less fun.