Special Features & Services

Wellspring is not just a recording studio. Beyond the challenges of recording and mixing an album, many artists and groups need other services to help finish their project. Among the other services we offer are:

Pre-Production: with over 400 albums recorded over the last 18 years, we have lots of experience with planning out a project for maximum efficiency. Good pre-production planning can save you big bucks and help you feel at your best when you're in the studio. We usually offer this advice without charge for the first hour of each album project, and then we charge $35/hour if more time is needed ( it often isn't).

Production: Wellspring's engineers often participate in the production of recording projects. In other words, beyond the engineering tasks of setting up microphones and getting sounds recorded, we offer ideas and advice (when requested) on how parts are working, suggestions on what instruments might sound best in a song, and other perspectives on the music. If you suddenly decide you need a bluesy keyboard part on your songs, and don't know who to call, we can help here too. We've worked with hundreds of musicians over the years, and keep an active file on the best players around, so feel free to ask us for referrals if you need them.

Photography and Video: Wellpring owns a very nice digital camera (a Nikon D70) with various lenses and flashes, and we're happy to shoot your band while you're in the studio for no extra charge. Typically we just email you the picture files or burn them onto a CD at the end of your session. If you need us to process shots for use on a CD, we can help you directly or refer you.

In December 2010 we bought three nice Panasonic AG-HMC150 camcorders, which take high definition video that can be processed for youtube or other video formats. You can also link your finished stereo audio files with the cameras and shoot MTV-style video the way the pros do it. We can help with this end of things ,as well as refer you to good video editors. Talk to us for more information.

Graphic Design: More often than not, graphic design issues and headaches delay the release of a project. Since the mid 80's we've helped artists get their albums laid out and off to the printers with a minimum of cost and delay. Over the last few years we've de-emphasized our graphic design efforts (there's only so much time in a day..), but we still take on projects now and then, and happily refer clients to other great designers out there.

Mastering: Mastering is the process of combining and editing together your best mixes into a cohesive, tonally balanced, rich-sounding final project. Roughly half the albums produced at Wellspring get mastered here as well, and we often master albums that were mixed at other studios. To this end we use certain hardware and software tools that aren't used anywhere else in the recording process. Sometimes clients want "fresh ears" on their mixes, and we're happy to recommend other facilities out there. Unfortumately, good mastering places outside of Wellspring typically charge around $100/hour, while Wellspring charges $55/hour for our work. For a full length CD, you can expect it to take about 3 1/2-4 hours to master, and longer if you have complex edits or changes to the material.

Tape and LP Digitization: Over the years we've had many requests to transfer old reel to reel tapes and LP reocrds to CD or other digital mediums. We can accomodate any analog tape format from the slowest to the fastest speeds ( from 1 7/8 ips to 30 ips), in either 1/4 track or halftrack format, We also offer tape baking to restore old tapes damaged by humidity and poor storage. We can play back and make CD's from LP's ranging from 33 rpm to 78 rpm, and we also handle cassttes. Please contact Eric at the studio for more info. Note: not every old tape is salvageable; some - a small percentage of what we've seen-are damaged beyond repair, and we have a very high batting average in restoring old tapes. However we work by the hour, not by the job, and clients who bring us their tapes for restoration should understand that they will be charged for time spent. We can usually determine within 20 minutes whether a tape is playable, but we have been surprised before.