Photo of John Rzeznik by Maxine Evans Photography.

As the lead singer, guitarist, and co-founder of The Goo Goo Dolls, John Rzeznik has a long history of audio enthusiasm. Over the decades, his band has frequented studios like Abbey Road, Ocean Way, EastWest, Electric Lady, and Blackbird, making them familiar with a wide variety of equipment dating back to the 80s. With millions of records sold, they’re on their thirteenth album that was produced by John himself, in part using his own gear setup.

We asked John to answer 20 Questions about his work thus far, from how his band got started, to where certain albums were made, and what his favorite consoles, amps, and stompboxes are.

  1. Can you talk about what the early days of The Goo Goo Dolls were like?

Sure. We lived in Buffalo, New York, where most of the live gigs were given to cover bands, so there weren't many opportunities for groups like us who made original music. Robby Takac and I decided to pursue a record deal instead, so I got a job cleaning toilets and making coffee at the studio he worked at. They mostly got booked for advertising jobs, and they let us use the recording room upstairs when everyone went home at 5 p.m. That’s how we made our first demos—we’d use the studio in the evening, stay until 4 a.m., and come back to work during the day. Once we had some songs recorded, we’d take them to the college radio station where I went to school and ask them to play our stuff.

  1. How would you contrast working in recording studios with your home studio? Do you have a preference?

I like working in professional studios, though I’m finding that a lot of places don’t have a lot of cool gear nowadays. They might have a good console, but hardly anything else, so I’ll bring in my racks of vintage gear to use alongside their in-house stuff. I wanted to own a setup that let me record an album anywhere, so I bought a Neve BCM10 and an API 1608 that are stored in cases we can roll into whatever studio we’re at. For our last album, “Chaos In Bloom”, we worked at a studio called Dreamland in New York and they had a nice API console there.

  1. How has your studio setup evolved since the 90s? Are there any hardware units you refuse to let go of?

I sold my old Gibson J45, so I don’t have a lot of stuff left from the old days aside from the original Naylor SuperDrive 60. I also have some vintage outboard units, mostly because the old stuff typically sounds better than the contemporary ones, but with that said, there are still some great recreations being made. One that comes to mind is the Unfairchild, which is ridiculously impressive. I’ve A-B’d it with the original and the differences are tiny. I try not to go overboard with gear though - what’s the point of spending millions on expensive equipment when you’d never have time to take care of it? But I love the Helios recreations, as well as the Electrodyne and Coil Audio stuff, all of which I have in my racks. I also love the Vacuvox U23, which is a great compressor-limiter.

  1. Is there a particular console that’s your all-time favorite?

My all-time favorite console is at EastWest Studios in LA. They have a Trident A Range in Studio C, and it’s the most unbelievable-sounding one I’ve heard. Using it was like coating all the tracks with sugar, and the EQs were so musical-sounding. We recorded “It's Christmas All Over” on it, as well as ”Chaos In Bloom”. Candance Stewart who runs the place has always been a great friend of ours, and so has Paula Salvatore from Capitol Studios. They’ve really helped us in the last 25 years.

  1. Do you remember which studio “A Boy Called Goo” was recorded at?

It was recorded at a place called Beartracks in southern New York. The studio was owned by Jay Beckenstein from the band Spyro Gyro, and he had one of the original Focusrite ISA 110 consoles. It was an amazing desk that you could both track and mix on without it sounding weird. People would always say you had to track on a Neve and mix on an SSL, but I never bought into that. Music is subjective and it’s about personal taste, which is why some people made great records on Tascam cassette machines.

  1. What was the most notable change between “A Boy Called Goo” and “Dizzy Up The Girl” in terms of production?

There was a greater reliance on Pro Tools on “Dizzy Up The Girl”. That was at the time when digital recording was becoming the go-to thing, but it always got on my nerves when certain studio managers would charge extra just for Pro Tools. As the software was gaining popularity, studios would bill you $400 a day for access to it, and I wouldn’t work at those places because it made no sense.

  1. Are there any pieces of gear that have continually been used on Goo Goo Dolls albums over the years?

The usual suspects are a vintage U 67 for my vocals, as well as LA-2As and 1176s. I love to experiment with unusual units, and the guys at Vintage King have been great partners for procuring that kind of stuff ever since we built our first studio in 2008. VK helped a lot with picking the right gear and giving advice, and they even rebuilt an old BCM10 for me. Looking back, I shouldn’t have sold that one.

  1. Speaking of Vintage King, do you remember how you first learned about the company?

I started wanting to own certain old equipment and discovered Vintage King’s website in the mid-2000s. I couldn't believe they existed, so I visited their warehouse in Detroit and was hooked after that. They have a lot of knowledge and have been great partners for the band.

  1. The Goo Goo Dolls’ latest album, “Chaos In Bloom”, is the first one you produced yourself. What sort of details did you have to pay attention to more than before when others were producing?

We’ve previously made albums that were very densely produced, meaning 150+ tracks, and I didn’t want to do that this time. We’ve worked with amazing producers and engineers in the past, and I learned a lot from them, but I wasn't always able to find the right sound for an album because producers would typically say, “Here’s how I work. Take it or leave it,” and if I said, “But I don't like that method,” they’d basically respond, “Then don't work with me.” So for “Chaos In Bloom”, I found an engineer called Chris Szczech, who’s great. He loves analog recording and is willing to experiment, which is what I wanted to do with hardware units like the Overstayer M-A-S, as well as plugins from FabFilter and SoundToys. 

I’d ignored profiling amps by Fractal and Kemper for a long time, but I ended up using them on this record. I also spent time talking to other engineers and producers about their craft, and learned a lot of new things, like recording a guitar amp with a padded U 67. It’s very different from using the SM57 or a Royer. We also used old Altec and PIE compressors and a pair of RCA BA6As. Greg Snow is modding a pair for me, and they sound incredible.

  1. Were there any units used on “Chaos In Bloom” that were a first for you?

Sure. The Overstayer M-A-S was one, as well as products from Electrodyne and Coil Audio. We also used the UnFairchild, which I was initially skeptical about. A real Fairchild costs a lot, and my first one from 2008 was $25,000, so it’s probably $100,000 nowadays. But I was happy to have access to the recreation. Also, the Undertone Audio products are amazing too.

Everybody wants their new recordings to sound like the old recordings because the sterility and linear nature of digital isn’t as emotional as analog. That said, I gravitate towards plugins that have a cool aesthetic because inspiration can come from anywhere. But the sea of plugins out there is endless, which leads to a tyranny of choice where you don’t know what to use. That’s what happened on “Chaos in Bloom”, though we pulled it together at the end. But when it came to vocals, I knew I couldn’t produce them alone, so I got my friend Greg Lautenberg to help.

  1. Do you remember what the most unusual thing is that you've done to achieve a particular sound?

We used ribbon mics to record horns on the Christmas album, so for “Chaos In Bloom”, I investigated how that was done in the past so we could achieve a more vintage sound. We wound up using an MCI console along with preamps from Coil Audio and Electrodyne. I also had a Silverface Fender Twin that refused to distort no matter how you crank it, so we ran the horns through there and placed telephone mics at the end of the room to capture a unique texture.

  1. Do you have a particular choice of mics for guitar amps?

I like using the U 67s, but I recently worked with a legendary engineer called Kevin Killen, and he made the SM57 and Royer combination sound unbelievable, which is what I’m using now. But just to be clear, I’m not a great engineer, and nor do I strive to be; I just want to find the equipment that inspires me to create new things.

  1. Do you remember what the least expensive gear is that you used on a record?

The four-channel Behringer headphone boxes that cost less than $100 sound amazing to me. I know the quality is crap, but I prefer using them because you can crank the volume really loud. I also have some cheap Telefunken tape recorder mics that are cool.

  1. What's been your most expensive gear purchase?

Robby and I bought a huge API Legacy console when we built the studio in Buffalo, but it turned out to be the biggest piece of crap. The seller shall remain nameless (laughs). It cost us $200,000 and we sold it for half of that, so it was a tough lesson.

  1. What are some of your favorite stompboxes?

I really like the Keeley Darkside Workstation, and I have an old Civil War Big Muff that was made in the Soviet Union and sounds amazing. I keep meaning to check out T-Rex's pedal version of the Binson Echorec. I used to have a disk version but it was a hassle to take care of. There’s a company called Dawner Prince Electronics who makes a multi-head echo called the Boonar, which is the closest thing to the Echorec, and I like that one too.

The coolest piece of outboard I have is a Radial EXTC-Stereo that lets you route your tracks through guitar pedals. It’s a game-changer in how it lets you bring pedals into your mix process. Pedals have a vibe that no other outboard does, which is something I learned from Jack Joseph Puig when we worked with him in the 90s. He used a lot of stompboxes to achieve his sounds.

  1. What are some of your all-time favorite guitar amps?

The original Joe Naylor SuperDrive 60 is one of them, as well as the Vox AC30 and the Marshall JMP 50 Watt from 1977, which is my favorite Marshall era. The JMP 50 Watts front that period were made in Canada and ended up being constructed differently due to the country's safety regulations, but it sounds amazing. The plexi versions are good too, but they get so loud that you can’t always record them. 

I’m also a fan of Victoria Amps, which is what I use for live shows. I ended up using both their version of the Bandmaster and Champ together.

  1. If you had to choose between one or the other, would you be comfortable going entirely analog or digital, and which would you prefer?

In a perfect world where I have unlimited money and a full-time tech, I’d only use analog gear because it does sound better to me. Most people want an analog front-end to complement their digital system, but it’s not always practical, which is why you sometimes have to compromise. But at the end of the day, I do love certain plugins, and almost all my tracks wind up with a SoundToys Decapitator on them (laughs).

  1. Who's been your favorite producer to work with since the first Goo Goo Dolls album?

Glen Ballard and Rob Cavallo were amazing, but sonically, our best album was  “Something For The Rest of Us,” which we made with Tim Palmer. The relationship didn’t end well, but the record was really cool in retrospect. I went back and listened to it recently and was like “Holy crap, I underestimated that one…” I didn't give him enough credit for it at the time, but he did a great job. 

I love working with Gregg Wattenberg because he’s all about the song. He has great engineers with him, like Kevin Killer, which allows him to focus on the creative side of things like writing and arranging, and I like that.

  1. What new music have you been listening to lately?

The 1975, as well as some Jack White stuff; he’s very innovative and cool. I’ve been listening to a lot of older music too, like Depeche Mode and The Cure. There were a lot of cool sounds being made in the 80s by guys who were doing things never done before. They made unique music that wasn’t derivative of anything else, and I keep being drawn back to those records.

  1. What's the one piece of advice that you’d give to aspiring producers or engineers today?

You don’t need to spend an enormous amount of money when there’s a lot of cool gear that's relatively inexpensive, but that said, pick two or three things that you can fall back on without fail, whether it’s a vintage LA-2A or a Urei 1176. You can’t go wrong with those and can use them on virtually everything. Another thing worth investing in is a vintage mic, and save up money for stereo pairs too. That way you can put them on anything.

*Photo of John Rzeznik by Maxine Evans Photography.

Andy CatlinWant to pick up some of the gear mentioned in this blog? We're here to help! Please contact a Vintage King Audio Consultant via email or by phone at 866.644.0160.