Offering hybrid music production in a 300-year-old farmhouse in rural northeast Switzerland, Balik Studio recently renovated its control room to include a Solid State Logic Duality Fuse Pro-Station SuperAnalogue mixing console.

‘I really wanted to make this among the best studios in Europe,’ says studio owner, musician, composer and producer Peter G Rebeiz, who is also a board member of the Montreux Jazz Foundation and the Montreux Jazz Café. ‘And if you want to build a studio that can work for everybody you need to have an SSL.’

In 1992 Rebeiz, had taken over a business at Balik Farm that was handcrafting smoked salmon to a Russian recipe from the time of the Romanov tsars. In 1996 he opened a residential recording studio on the top floor of the farmhouse that was designed by UK-based acoustic and studio design consultant Andy Munro. It features a spacious live room that can accommodate a classical ensemble or jazz big band – and over the years has attracted clients such as Herbie Hancock, Pepe Lienhard, Pippo Pollina, Michael von der Heide and Gölä. Today, the two businesses continue to operate from the same location, roughly 50km east of Zürich.

A veteran freelance studio and live sound engineer, Gögs Andrighetto had helped repair and restore Balik Studio to full operation during the coronavirus pandemic and continues to make the facility his homebase. Part of this restoration, SSL distribution partner for Switzerland, MGM Audio, supplied the SSL Duality Fuse Pro-Station, a version of the console that provides integrated hands-on hardware control over a DAW.

‘A keyboard and mouse don’t usually fit very well with an analogue console, but the Pro-Station fits perfectly,’ Andrighetto says. ‘That was important for me, because 99 per cent of my work is with the computer.‘But, of course, the most important thing about the console is the sound. We do a lot of classical recordings – and pop and rock music – so we wanted a really clean microphone preamp. And for classical recording, this is really the best microphone preamp.’

Having completed around half a dozen projects since the new console was installed, Andrighetto has had plenty of opportunities to evaluate its features, especially the integrated Fusion analogue processor.

‘I love to have the Fusion on the master bus because it’s really musical,’ he reports. ‘If I want to add a little bit of drive, more highs or less lows, I can do everything I need to do in Fusion. I always have the Fusion in Mix A and if I want to add an outboard compressor or EQ, I put that in Mix B. The console is a perfect fit with the analogue gear that we have here.’

Rebeiz produces many of the projects that come through Studio Balik, and likes to support artists just getting started in the business by helping them record their first album. He is especially excited about an ongoing project that spotlights the first and last violas, now owned by a Swiss foundation, made by Italian master luthier Antonio Stradivari, in 1672 and 1734 respectively.

‘It’s not every day that you have musicians walking in with US$50m or US$60m dollars-worth of instruments and start playing in your room, so we’re filming everything and making a movie,’ Rebeiz says. ‘We’re using the best mixing console, the very best microphones and the best recording devices. It has been thrilling, and we’re not finished yet.’

Rebeiz had hoped to install an SSL console when he originally opened Studio Balik, but analogue desks of the time were large and potentially too heavy for the wooden floor of the old farmhouse. Instead, he installed a console that presented a steep learning curve to anyone unfamiliar with its operation. ‘The decision to install this SSL Duality had a lot to do with the fact that I want to allow more people to come here, and I also want to make it more attractive for larger projects. I wanted a residential studio where you could go to create and compose,’ he says – like George Martin’s AIR Montserrat, one of his favourite facilities.

‘I want to make it easy for people to come to the Alps in Switzerland and spend a week or two weeks. They will feel at home and immediately understand how everything works. That is the true power of SSL, apart from its wonderful sound, because SSL is an industry standard.’

More: www.solidstatelogic.com