Located in Tempe, Arizona, FiveThirteen was built in 2006 by Catherine Vericolli and Jeff Harris to support the Phoenix independent music scene. The studio’s initial ambition was to provide a professional and affordable space for local bands and musicians in what is now it's a Room. The B Room mixing suite was added in 2010 to accommodate session overflow.
Still the facility’s flagship, the A Room has recently seen the installation of a 32-channel Rupert Neve Designs 5088 analogue mixing console, loaded with Portico 5012, 5033, 5043 and Shelford 5051 modules.
The decision to acquire a new board was based not just on the desire for something new and exciting, but also in a search for a robust console would require minimal maintenance. According to Catherine Vericolli, the team ‘decided to do as much physical seeing and touching as we could – which led us to a get-together at a beautiful studio in Wimberley,’
Among the people they met there was Rupert Neve himself, who was able to answer their questions directly: ‘Rupert Neve is on the top of the list of guys that don’t need to sell their own gear. So, when he took the time to chat with a couple of young punks from Phoenix about the desk, his philosophy, why he chose to build it the way he did – we were shocked and humbled to say the least.’
Hearing the console and seeing the dedication of the team behind it was all they needed: ‘We left Wimberley and didn’t even bother to look at any other consoles. We were sold – by the desk, sure, but so much more by the people who represented it.
‘Upon installing the 5088, we found that it wasn’t cold and without character like many modern consoles, nor was it trying to sound like the vintage designs of the past,’ Vericolli reports. ‘Even as an analogue mixing desk, unloaded and lacking preamps and EQs that traditionally give a console its ‘sound’, it was noticeably warm, full, and accurate.’
FiveThirteen discovered that the most noticeable attribute to them was that the 5088 wasn’t leaving anything out. ‘Every frequency was present with the same robustness. It just sounded complete,’ Vericolli says. ‘There is an absoluteness about everything this console does – it has an incomparable tactility. When you engage any part of the console, you are engaging more than 50 years of trustworthy and unprecedented electronic pedigree. The craziest thing is that it literally “feels” that way.’
