614: Long Playing - Inside Musicol

Over at 614 Magazine in July 2018, Mike O'Shaughnessy explores the local gem that is Musicol:

Digital media has become the throwaway pile, whereas your vinyl collection has been restored as the musical collection with which to impress your friends. 

Which is why it’s worth celebrating that of the few one-stop factories left in the country, one shares a zip code with Rod’s Western Palace. 

House Engineer Keith Hanlon has been behind the mixing board in Studio A since 2013, filling Smith’s boots when he left for Texas. A few things drew him to concentrate his energies at Musicol, but among them was the prospect of getting to spend every day at work amongst his own personal utopia of classic sound engineering. When he attended Ohio University, his class was the last to work with tape before ditching analog for the impending condensing. 

“It is the oldest studio in Columbus [1968]. The studio’s history drew me in, but the kicker is the collection of vintage gear there. I’m able to work in both the digital and analog realms. We still have multitrack tape machines there, and plenty of musicians want the opportunity to record to tape,” he said. “I love the workflow of an analog session, because everybody knows they have to nail the performance. Editing a performance is much more time-consuming and difficult.” Hanlon’s presence completes the circle of quality that comes with a session at Musicol: the studio thrives because of the caliber of the gear and of the staff controlling the machines.

Dispatch: Musicol owner still meeting recording needs of varied clients

The Columbus Dispatch recently chatted with local legend John Hull of Musicol, which records, masters and presses records local, and is responsible for dozens, if not hundreds, of local releases. Check out part of the interview:

Q: At first, you just had the studio. How did you get into the record-pressing business? 

A: We were recording a lot of Southern gospel. There were quite a few of those groups around Columbus at that time. We had a mastering facility, but were sending out to a company in Cincinnati to get the records manufactured. We found out that company had a studio, and whenever we’d send out an order, he’d contact our customers behind our backs and say “Come on down here to Cincinnati to record!?” (Laughs) We found out what he was doing, one of our customers told us, so we said “Why can’t we press records?”