Mercury Recording Equipment Company

User Reviews

Jean-Paul Fung (Mercury M72s)

Producer Jean-Paul Fung is 23, and the band he produced, Last Dinosaurs, are all younger than him. Signed to Dew Process, they’d already recorded a single Time & Place with Fung that had gone gangbusters on Triple J, and decided to stick with him. Their indie songs, and pop musicality, a perfect match for Fung’s production style.

So, the band and Jean-Paul started a recording process that sounds idyllic, picture-perfect even — how every indie kid dreams of making a record: pre-production out in the countryside, long walks in the bush to workshop lyrics, midnight runs along the main road of Yarramalong to hammer frustrations out on the pavement, riding pushbikes to and from one of Sydney’s premier studios, and every night, sitting down together for a luxurious dinner.

“Since getting interested in production, I started building quite a collection of gear. My philosophy was to make sure I got the very best. I've hardly sold anything in that time. I would just save up and get the best gear I could afford.”

Jean-Paul’s home setup also includes a couple of Chandler LTD-1 EQ/preamps, Chandler TG channel, Mercury M72s preamp, two Quad Eight MM403 channel strips, EL-8 Distressor, as well as Coles 4038 ribbons, Schoeps CMC6 mics with MK4 capsules, Shure SM7b and SM57s, AKG 451EB and D112, Beyerdynamic M201 and TG-X50, and a Heil PR30, into Pro Tools.

“We tried out a few different mics for Sean [guitarist for Last Dinosaurs]. We tried out a Neumann U47, and a Coles 4038, but we ended up going with the Shure SM7B. We also tried out a bunch of pres, but went with the SM7B into the Mercury M72s, which is an awesome clone of a Telefunken V72. Then that went into the EQ stage of the Chandler LTD1, adding some 12k, ducking some 1k, with an 80Hz high pass filter on it. Then, of course, into the Retro 176.”

Download and read the PDF version of the entire article which originally appeared in Australia's AudioTechnology Magazine (issue 88).