Vintage King Integration Turns The Vision For Studio33:3 Into Reality

At Grand Rapids First church in Wyoming, Michigan, you’ll find Studio33:3, a state-of-the-art recording studio equipped with top-shelf outboard gear, a hybrid console from SSL, and a Dolby Atmos setup for a music experience that is truly immersive. 

But, as Drew McElhenny, Executive Pastor of Worship, Tech, and Communications, tells us, Studio33:3 is more than just a state-of-the-art recording studio. It represents the power of music in worship, in a space designed for generations to come, and is the legacy of a young life sadly cut short. 

Drew sat down with us recently to talk about the poignant backstory of Studio33:3, the vision for the studio, and how Vintage King’s Design & Integration Manager James Good and acoustical consulting firm Haverstick Designs worked together with Drew and his team to design and install the entire system and bring their vision to life. 

Read on to find out more about this unique space that has just been named a finalist at the 2026 NAMM TEC Awards in the Studio Design Project category.

Tell us a bit about Studio33:3 and the role it plays in the Grand Rapids First church.

Studio33:3 is inspired by Sarah Rijfkogel, the daughter of Pastor Sam and Pastor Brenda, our lead pastors. She served as a worship leader here at our church, and in 2020, at the age of 25, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. After a 15-month, faith-filled battle with cancer, she passed away on January 12th, 2022.

A foundation had been started in Sarah's name before she passed away, and when Sarah was asked what she would like to see the foundation accomplish, she said it was her heart and desire that the next generation know and worship God.

After she passed, Pastors Sam and Brenda asked, “Can we make a recording studio?” And they didn’t want it to just be any studio; they wanted it to be a world-class studio that could propel the next generation of Christian artists and worship music. It was very exciting to hear, because it resonates so much with what Sarah loved. Way back, we had a project studio here at the church that Vintage King had helped us with, and I know Sarah would be blown away by this bigger project.

Sarah had a tattoo of an ellipsis on her wrist—it was a symbol of her life—and the reason she had that was because for her, it meant that the story goes on. Now, you’ll see ellipses throughout the studio in different forms: there are three circular lights that hang over the top; we have an ellipsis in the live room… through the studio, the story continues.

That’s so beautiful! It's a space in which voices collectively add to the music over the years.

That's what's so amazing about it. When you get into a project like this, you obviously desire for it to be the best, and you want everything to fall into place, but we really have seen God's hand on the whole project from start to finish. I was so involved throughout the whole project, but every time I go in there, I'm still blown away that we have this amazing studio that's going to help propel the next sound.

What was it like working with James Good and Vintage King to build out the studio? Take us through the whole process.

This project was quite long—it took two years and nine months to complete—and James was just awesome throughout the process. Right from the beginning, James said, “We need to get a great studio designer to help make this space acoustically and functionally the way it needs to be,” so he set us up with Gavin Haverstick from Haverstick Designs, and it couldn't have been a more perfect match. Gavin and his team were such a great fit; they did a wonderful job, and Gavin has become a close friend of our church.

We told them what we wanted the studio to look and feel like, and he took that and figured out how we could make it acoustically correct. I really appreciate his method of doing things because it gave us a look and feel that we are inspired by, and he was able to make it function the way it needs to in order to create great recordings.

After James set us up with Gavin, we also started the exploration of choosing what gear we wanted for the studio. We traveled down to Nashville, and James was kind enough to walk us through multiple studios there, which really gave us a better idea of where we wanted our studio to land.

We looked at consoles, monitors, and patchbay setups, and got an idea of all the different ways we could go. One of the things that we desired with the studio—and we shared this with James from the beginning—is that we wanted to meet the professional standards out there, but also, we didn’t want this to be a place that was only customized for us. 

We have many uses for the studio as a church, but we also wanted to create a space that was flexible, so if someone wants to come in here, they're very comfortable right away. If they go, “Can you set it up a certain way?”, we can set it up that way.

The goal was to create an environment that takes out all of the worries of figuring out how to do things. When you're having to work on figuring out how to do stuff, that can steal from creativity sometimes. So, we wanted to create a place that was flexible, and James really helped us with that. 

Initially, we put together what type of gear is most standard in different studios. We went back and forth on different things, and the whole way through, James and Vintage King were instrumental in helping us shape the vision for this studio.

We had looked at some SSL consoles, which we really liked, and I said to James, “If there happens to be an SSL Duality that you come across out there, just keep it on your radar and let me know”. And I want to say it was not long after that—just a couple of weeks later—that he called and said, “I think I got the perfect one!” Sure enough, it had come from a college in Michigan and VK helped us with the commissioning of the console, reworked it inside and out, and got it fully ready to where it was working perfectly. 

There was a lot of prep leading up to that, such as the patchbay design. We wanted to make sure that we got the most out of the console and the patchbay, so I had our Operations Director, Corydon Tuttle, work with VK on the design to figure out how to make it the most flexible.

Vintage King, and James specifically, were a huge help in making sure we met the standards that we wanted to meet. I remember when we wanted to put in a Dolby Atmos system, James was alongside and working with Gavin to make sure that we had the specs needed to meet Dolby's requirements. Gavin was working with Dolby on the placement of things, but James was always in the conversation. Every time I'd give James a call, he was always available to help us, even if it was just for working through an idea. He's been great in this whole process. 

You mentioned in another interview that Atmos is very well suited for Christian music—could you elaborate on that?

Specifically, as it relates to Christian music, one of the things we have a lot of is live worship experiences that happen in the room, and to be able to have that live experience translated in a way that places you in the room is very special. 

It’s very powerful when you experience worship with others, so when you’re hearing the audience response mics all around you, it feels like you're really sitting there in the room, and that is a powerful experience.

In general, I think immersive listening is going to be more and more prominent as devices are making it more of a default experience. On top of that, for live sound, there's no other way to share that same experience, so we're very excited about being able to do more Atmos with worship music. 

Were there any challenges during the studio building process?

Yeah, in a commercial facility, there are a lot of requirements that have to be met, some of which are different from state to state. There were several different things that we had to go back and forth on, with Gavin specifically. We’d have a certain requirement for our city, and Gavin would come back and say, “Let me talk with the contractor and see if we can find a way to make that work”. So there were lots of challenges, and we had to figure out everything that needed to be met from a code perspective, but still accomplish what we wanted and not cut any corners on the sound side.

That's where a great design and integration team really becomes important.

That's exactly right!

What drew you to the SSL Duality SE console?  

The SSL sound is legendary! It has a transparent clarity, yet the ability to saturate and color the sound, and that is really exciting for us. And then, with the Duality console, being able to have the EQ and dynamics section right there on each channel was one of the things we loved most about it. 

The efficiency is great; things are just faster. We do session after session and are able to accomplish more by having that console. It gives us the flexibility to add things, make changes, and do it in a way where we're not having to rethink the whole setup. 

The other thing about the SSL Duality is its hybrid functionality. We live in the DAW for a lot of what we do, so being able to take those DAW inputs and send them right back in through the console is great. So being able to control the DAW is perfect, and at the same time, if you want to operate it more like an analog console, you can do that, so that was one of the other things that drew us to the SSL Duality.

How did you customize it for your studio's needs?  

It's a 48-channel bay; we have 24 of the channels filled, and on the right side of the console, we added a large screen. That's been really nice because, for example, say you're working in Atmos, you can have your Atmos panner window open on that screen. Or if you're doing a mastering session, you can have your mastering plug-ins on that screen and monitor things.

It's nice to have that because it's close but out of the way, and it has worked out really well with the layout of the console. And then, if we ever need to, we could fill out the rest of the console with more channels in the future. 

The biggest thing with customizing was that we wanted to make sure that in the patchbay design, we were utilizing the whole console—again, for the sake of flexibility. So instead of making it do just one particular thing, we want it to be able to do just about anything, and with the amount of inputs, outputs, auxes, and effects on the SSL Duality, we can do that.

We have it set up in a way that it’s very easy to walk in and work with a DAW by default, and cabling-wise, in the patchbay, it's very easy to change things around to make it the way that you want to make it. That was the big thing for us—the flexibility.

Tell us about the Genelec monitoring system you have in the studio.

It's a 7.1.4 system: the left, center, and right speakers are Genelec 8350A SAM monitors; the surround speakers and the height speakers are 8340As; and we have the 7382A, with the triple 15-inch woofers, so we’ve now got a big old subwoofer in the room!  

The one thing with Genelec that we were really excited about is that the white speakers feel like an integrated part of the room. The speakers on their own look awesome, but you see them in that room and it's like, “Well, yeah, it was designed for that!” For us, that was really exciting. 

And then the GLM system is amazing as well. We have the 9101A Wireless Volume Controller that controls volume and our different presets. VK was able to use GLM to tune the system, and they were able to double-check that tuning manually and make sure that all of those things aligned. It was just excellent right out of the gate. When people come into the room, that's the big wow moment for everybody! When we first heard the system and turned it up, we were just blown away by the immersive experience. 

We are really happy that we went with that larger sub. It worked out really well because we're using that larger sub for bass management for all of those other speakers, and we use the Lynx Aurora(n) to handle that bass management for us. What's great is that, because all those speakers are being bass managed, if someone wants to come in and just have a listening experience—maybe not for mixing but just to enjoy their song—they can just crank it up, and it handles it so well. We've been very happy with the Genelec system, and there’s no question in our mind that if we could go back, we would do it all over again the same way.

What are some of your other favorite pieces of outboard gear at Studio33:3?

We love the Universal Audio LA-2A and the 1176s; I'm also so glad that we went with the Pultec EQP-1A. It's one of those pieces that you dial i, and then you bypass it, and you're like, “What happened?” [laughs] because the sound falls apart when you bypass. It's just amazing what that EQ adds!

Of course, having the SSL Bus Compressor right there on the console is awesome. We love the Mäag Audio EQ4M Mastering EQ as well. It’s hard to pick a favorite piece because we really love the outboard gear selection we have here.

What is a typical day in the studio like for you?

It's still unfolding for us. We spent this first year really getting to know the system, and we had a lot of projects in-house. For example, we’ve been recording songs from our church group, Wind & Embers, in the studio.

We have a Good Friday production at the church for which we bring surround sound speakers into our auditorium, and for that, I was able to actually mix everything in Atmos and then downmix those Atmos stems into a format that would work in our Worship Center auditorium.

We also had a Christmas production for which we recorded some backing tracks for the choir in the studio. We have a nice, big live room here, so we're able to get the whole choir in there, and it works perfectly for that. We’ll do it again this year! 

Another thing that’s great is a broadcast mix that we do every Sunday—through Dante, we pipe all the channels from the Worship Center into the studio and make a live broadcast mix out of the studio. The sound of that studio and helping translate those mixes has just been amazing. We do that every week, and it has made a huge difference for us.

All that to say, we have lots of uses for the studio already, but we're very excited for our next steps and now want to move outside of our church walls and actually expand that vision. We want upcoming Christian artists and worship to come out of this place—not just out of our house here, but we want that to be out of other churches and other individuals that are out there. We're starting those conversations now and kind of turning on the lights, if you will, for everybody outside of here. We’re very excited about that. 

Learn how Vintage King Integration can help you build the studio of your dreams.

If you’re interested in purchasing a Duality console or have any questions about other SSL products, we're here to help! Contact a Vintage King Audio Consultant via email or by phone at 866.644.0160.