Tayte Nickols is one of the most sought-after producers for emerging musical artists in the U.K. and around the world. His early forays into recording and production included an internship at Catalyst Studios where he would learn the Pro Tools platform. By age 23, he would become one of the youngest commercial studio owners in England with the opening of Mad Fox in Manchester. Most recently, he was honored with Breakthrough Producer of the Year recognition by the Music Producers Guild — a British analogue of the U.S.-based Recording Academy (Grammy®) Producers and Engineers wing. His preferred microphones for nearly all applications are from AUDIX, including the multi-mic FP7 Fusion kit on drums; the SCX25A on piano, overhead duties, and other acoustic sources; and the A133 large-diaphragm condenser on vocals and acoustic guitar, and most recently, the new D6X on kick drums and toms. Despite his time being impossibly in demand, he spoke with AUDIX about his career so far, overcoming dyslexia, and his use of our mics in his recording process.
“At Catalyst Studios, I had a three-month internship with an accomplished producer called Sugarhouse,” Tayte recalls of his introduction to AUDIX microphones. “He always used a D6 as his kick drum mic and an i5 on the snare. So, when I started to get set up, I knew they were great, and not crazy money, either. Then I saw the Fusion series kit and thought it would be a very good jumping-off point.”
The D6 has become ubiquitous in studios on kick drum and other bass-heavy sources, and Tayte offers a reason why: “I always request the D6 if I’m working in a commercial studio, because you put it in front of the kick, or a bass guitar cabinet, and it just works.”
Tayte has found the SCX25A no less accommodating as overheads. “Whether I have them in a standard overhead configuration or in X/Y, which I’ll sometimes do, they just sound right,” he reflects. “The cymbals and snare cut really nicely in them, but they stay warm and don’t get too sharp or strident, which can happen with a lot of condensers as overheads. I was actually pleasantly surprised the first time I put them up there. They created a nice stereo picture of the kit with very little effort needed.”
Though Tayte is a fan of tracking through outboard processors, he finds that with AUDIX mics, this only makes a good thing even better. “I’m pretty heavy on outboard no matter what,” he explains. “For example, the D6 is amazingly sculpted for kick right out of the box, but I like to push things in that direction even further. If I’m at a place like Abbey Road, I’ll run it through a Neve 1084 preamp. With the SCX, I find all I ever do is brighten them up a little, and I can’t imagine I’d ever want compression on them because they already sound so even. I suppose what I’m saying is, yes, I do EQ quite a bit, but with AUDIX mics it’s to enhance what they’re already doing, not to compensate for what they’re not doing.”
Most recently, Tayte has been using the new AUDIX D6X for kick drums and toms: “Sometimes, I’d need to swap mics or tweak settings to get the extra mids or tame an airy kick sound. But not anymore—now I just flip to the middle setting, and boom, all the mids I need are there. In my production room, I’m a “set-it-and-forget-it” kind of guy. Switching out mics used to kill my creative flow and slow down sessions, but now I can change the sound with a flick of a switch. I’ve also found that the D6X is way more usable on toms. Those extra filtering options really make a difference!”
The performance of Tayte’s A133 on vocals is an exemplar of why he prefers AUDIX. “For vocals I find that what someone sings into the A133 is what I get out of it,” he says. “It’s straightforward and truthful, and helps me instead of hindering me. It’s next to impossible to screw up vocals with that mic, and next to impossible to botch recording any source with AUDIX in general!”
