It took me two years but thanks to all the help and advice I received on GS, I finally finished building JML Studios, a poolside oasis 15 minutes away from Manhattan, New York City. I’m in the Clifton/Nutley northern New Jersey area.

We have a spacious control room with a lounge in the back, a live room with modern & vintage equipment, a second lounge with 5.1 surround sound on a 109 inch projector screen, tielines, and a custom made JML branded video game arcade with over 7000 games. The bathroom also has tie lines which we can reamp in and there’s an 8 foot, cold rolled steel plate reverb in the attic.

Private entrance on the side of the building for load in and private bath and small bedroom for bands to stay.

There’s a huge collection of vintage and modern outboard gear as well as an extensive collection of instruments from all around the world. Since I myself play over 50 instruments, we specialize in getting very unique sounds in very unique ways.

Our mic locker includes everything from vintage U67s and Rca 44’s, to modern DPA’s and slate mics. We also have a collection of racked channel strips from all my favorite classic consuls of all time such as Telefunken, Neumann, Neve, Neotek, Studer, Otari and Roger Mayer. I call it the crayon box and it’s essentially a 16 channel console from all my favorite classic consoles!

There’s a brand new heated pool outback with 40,000 gallons of water and a secret garden for artists to unwind and clear their mind. We’re only a 15 minute comfortable charter bus right away from port authority in Manhattan and have already been running some pretty incredible sessions here without any issues. Bus stop is right on the corner!

I’m really overwhelmed and I feel incredibly blessed to even own such a space. I went from being whipped with patch cables as an assistant at Saltmine Studios and Electric Lady Studios to owning my own space and working on what I want to. I never thought it was possible but thanks to everybody on gearspace who gave me hundreds of tips and ideas, we were able to achieve this project right on budget.

The master hand box of acoustics was probably the best piece of advice I got in building the studio. It not only taught me how to design and construct doors windows and walls, but it also gave me tips about isolating sound through unique baffle boxes which snake sound waves back-and-forth for supply and return in the HVAC system. Sound waves have a difficult time turning corners and this proved to be a brilliant solution to keeping sound out of the rest of the property. You can have people sleeping upstairs at four in the morning with a full rock band blasting away right below them and somehow it’s completely isolated.

In many regards, I’m actually quite astounded that this actually worked, being that I am not a contractor, my dad and I did all the work ourselves (there were no walls, electric or plumbing, we did it all) and had no prior experience on construction at all. I feel like I could Frame and build an entire house now if I wanted to, although I don’t think I’ll ever do a project like this ever again. I breathed in enough sawdust, sheet rock dust and chemical vapors for a lifetime.

Here’s a link to our beta website I created:
https://lutzmultimedia.com/jml-recording-studios/