Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Zella Day blends modern pop with a touch of Western Bohemian flair. A native of Arizona, she was raised in a small mountain town near Phoenix, where her parents ran a cafe and art space whose creative clientele helped to nurture her musical interests.

Picking up the guitar at age 9, she was writing her first songs within a few years, influenced by the classic singer/songwriter records in her parents' collection and her rugged natural surroundings. Eventually relocating to L.A., Day first came to notice when her 2012 acoustic cover of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" began racking up the hits on YouTube.

While it's tempting to compare Day to ubiquitous pop divas such as Lorde and Lana Del Rey, the sonqwriter has her own charmed style. Unlike some of her peers, her songs are more about being in sync with the universe rather than vice versa.

Soon she adopted a lusher, pop-oriented sound, which led some critics to refer to her as a happier sounding Lana Del Rey. Her first single, "Sweet Ophelia"/"1965," arrived in April 2014 and in October of that same year she released her self-titled debut EP on California indie B3SCI Records.

BAE Gear: 1073 DMP

BAE 1073 MP Preamp the Key to Capturing Great Guitar Sounds for Pete Thorn

Pete Thorn records his guitar in his home studio quite a lot. Part of that’s do to his new line of work. While he first developed a reputation as a crack session and touring guitarist working with artists like Courtney Love, Chris Cornell, and Melissa Ethridge, Thorn has found a niche for himself that calls on some other skills as well. “A big part of what I do these days is demos for gear companies,” he says. “There are an incredible number of manufacturers out there making all kinds of gear for musicians and engineers and people want to evaluate them and see what each one does." Thorn’s skill on the guitar, combined with his experience as a music sales person and his many years teaching lessons gives him a unique ability to create concise, yet thorough videos demonstrating the new tech to a wide audience over the internet. To record these demos, Thorn has turned to BAE Audio’s powerful 1073MP preamplifier, giving him an edge on other pedal reviewers out there with a pristine analog signal path for his guitar mics.

The New Vintage

Though Thorn has always paid significant attention to how his guitar has been recorded for his videos, he had not worked with classic vintage pres before he acquired the 1073MP. “I’m not an expert on the vintage 1073 sound,” he says. “But my good buddy Steve Stevens told me about BAE’s 1073MP and their reputation for quality recreations of classic pres.” Thorn was immediately interested in giving it a try and picked up one for his home studio. He was immediately pleased with the analog warmth that the 1073 preamp brought to his sound. “Right away there was a thickness to it that was really cool,” he says. “It also added a certain sparkle to the high end. It’s really fat but defined, which allows it to sit in the mix well.”

Committing to Quality

Thorn is fond of a two mic approach to capturing the sound of a guitar cabinet. “I like to blend a dynamic mic and a ribbon mic when I’m tracking my amp,” Thorn explains. “Like a lot of people working with a DAW, I’m often building a track up piece by piece, so by the time I’m tracking guitars I usually have a pretty good sense of the sound I’m looking for,” says Thorn, who often creates mini-songs as part of his demos that also include programmed drums and tracked bass guitar. “With those two mics running through the 1073, I can always dial in exactly the tone I need.” Thorn noted how little post-processing is required to get his guitar sound to sit properly in the final mix, too. “I don’t have to do much in the box, really just a bit of fine tuning with plugins. With these pres I’ve got the sound exactly where I need it, which I vastly prefer to a ‘we’ll fix it in the mix’ approach.”

Thorn has also experimented with driving the 1073 to enhance its highly musical saturation characteristics. “There are other pres on the market that are more aggressively crunchy, but with the 1073 you can throw a mic on a guitar amp, crank up the pre and drive it a bit and it’s just an incredibly thick sound without becoming harsh or losing its character,” he says.

Already Ready, Already

For Thorn, his recording setup has never been easier to work with. “99% of what I do here is tracking and mixing guitars, and it has never been easier for me to get a good sound,” he says. “I’ve got a cab miced up in my front room with my two mics running through the 1073MP, and I’m tracking through it all the time,” he says. “It’s my go-to thing these days, so I leave the mics and pres set up and it’s always ready for me.” The requests keep coming in for Thorn to review new products, and he’s feeling more confident than ever in his ability to give an accurate representation of what the hottest new equipment and instruments sound like. “I try to keep my commentary short and to the point when I do video reviews, and I also try to make sure the audio represents what the gear would sound like if you tracked it for your own record,” he says. “The 1073MP allows me to do that better than ever before.”

BAE Audio 1073MP with Steve Stevens Blend Mod is the Weapon of Choice for Crack Session Guitarist and YouTube Star Tim Pierce

Guitarist Tim Pierce has recorded and toured with some of the biggest names in the industry since first moving to LA at age 20 to pursue his dreams of becoming a session musician. His credits include Crowded House, Christina Aguilera, Seal, and many more. Having left his mark on countless recordings throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, Pierce remains a busy session musician into this decade, but has diversified his output with his extensive Tim Pierce Guitar Masterclass subscription video series, featuring over 400 instructional guitar videos and counting. His YouTube channel, which recently surpassed 100,000 subscribers, further augments his growing online presence as an educator.

To capture singing guitar solos and tight rhythm parts for both his session clients and his subscribers, Pierce relies on BAE Audio’s 1073MP preamp with the Steve Stevens blend mod, which delivers a classic sound that meets and exceeds the quality of the vintage preamps that inspired them.

An Ear for the Classics

Pierce is no stranger to iconic studio gear. Recording both at home and in many of the top studios around the world at different points in his career, he is well acquainted with the sound of vintage gear. “I’ve owned every kind of pre at some point, including vintage 1073s, so I’m very familiar with what they sound like,” he says. “The BAE Audio 1073MP sounds just like the original vintage units, but with a better top end.” Pierce elaborates: “They’re somehow even more open in the high frequencies.”

Hand-wired in California to the exacting specifications of beloved vintage designs, BAE Audio’s preamplifiers feature the same circuitry and Carnhill St. Ives transformers that helped the original 1073 find its way into so many studios, large and small, around the world.

Recording the majority of his session work as well as audio for his video classes in his home studio in LA these days, Pierce utilizes two channels with both mics fed through the 1073MP to create a radio-ready guitar sound. “A great guitar sound to me has a really strong midrange, a tight bottom end, and a top end that’s full of air,” he says. To achieve this he utilizes two differently-voiced speaker cabinets simultaneously, a 4x12” and a 1x12”, running out of the same amplifier. Each cabinet is miced with both a dynamic microphone and a ribbon microphone for a variety of tonal options.

Both mics are fed directly through Pierce’s 1073MP rack and then into an analog summing box, where Pierce adjusts each mic’s level until he finds the perfect complement before hitting Pro Tools.

A Sound Worth Committing To

For Pierce, committing to his guitar sound outside the box is stress-free because of how well the sound of his 1073MP preamps translates in any mix. “In order to punch through a mix, a guitar needs to have a really strong midrange, which the 1073MP gives it,” he says. “Any mixing engineer is probably going to take away some of the low end during the process, but the imprint from the 1073 is so strong that even when you’re competing with vocals, keyboards, drum, and bass guitar it still manages to poke through.”

He also notes the importance of the 1073MP’s smoothness in the high end. “That glassy top end really helps, too, especially on clean guitars that are going to be turned up a bit in the mix.”

Clarity in the Mix and in the Studio

Pierce says that he has traditionally changed his mind periodically about which preamps to use for guitar tracking, but the 1073MP has brought a new level of clarity to his decision making process over the past few years. “I’m using the 1073MP nearly 100% of the time now,” he says. “I’m almost in a state of disbelief about how good these preamps are.”

In his role as a teacher, he finds himself thinking a lot more about other guitarists and how they can achieve their goals. He sees the BAE Audio 1073MP as a worthwhile investment for anyone committed to the instrument. “If you’re a guitarist and you buy a 1073MP, I don’t think you’ll need anything else for the rest of your life,” he says. “It’s truly a lifetime purchase.”