When I visited Sun Studio in Memphis, I couldn't help but imagine Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, or Johnny Cash jamming around. The place is tiny, but full of timeless jewels.
Sun Studio is visited by hordes of tourists every day. But at night when the last tourists leave the place, the magic starts. Any band can come and record here. It may come as a surprise to some of you, but it has been booked by quite notorious artists, such as Chris Isaak, Def Leppard, U2, Ringo Starr, ... and at the time I was there, a very big American band, but I'm afraid I can't give you their names, as they didn't make it public. Maybe you can guess the band's name by looking at my picture of their guitars...
The studio has absolutely nothing to do with the ones that are available nowadays, but it definitively strips the music back to its basics: no headphones, no overdubs, no instrument isolation; just four or five open mics and the band playing live. Guitar amps can be buried under mattresses to be simultaneously turned up and dampened down, as in old times. The primitive baffling (panels to dampen the sound), combined with the confined space of the room, create a unique and distinctive sound: the Sun sound.
The tracking room remains unchanged since the fifties, but it has been recently refurbished with two Ampex 350 tape machines, a 1940s 6N vinyl-cutting lathe with a Presto preamp, and an RCA 76D tube console.
Sun Studio regularly releases studio session podcasts on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyA075eiz28
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