5088 Spotlight: Johnny Green Giant Studio, Belgium
Located inside a former wood manufacturing company building just outside of the city of Ghent, Johnny Green Giant Studio was built-out almost entirely by studio owner Jonathan Troch and his father, who’d been in construction all his life.
We noticed the studio on Instagram and reached out to Jonathan, and he was kind enough to provide these beautiful photos for our use here. Enjoy.
THE BUILDING
“It was this huge hangar with a really ugly office building attached to the front. It took us roughly two and a half years to build the studio – except for the cabling and the patchbay work, we did all the construction on our own.”
THE ROOMS
“We have one mix room – we are only focused on tracking and mixing, not mastering. We have a window in front of the console that looks right into the big recording room. In the big room, approximately 100 square meters, there are two different flavors/possibilities as the room can be divided in two with a huge acoustic curtain. In the front the ceiling is lower. If you close the curtain you don’t get the room sound of the rest of the room, and the sound is dryer. The back of the room with the big arch is perfect for recording room sound recording strings, or recording a solo grand piano. Our studio is the only public studio in Belgium that has a permanent Fazioli grand in the backline, which attracts a lot of jazz musicians. We also have four small booths, each with a different flavor of sound – good for keeping guitar cabs isolated from the rest of the recording. Of course we have a kitchen and a big living space to rest, write, whatever you want. We have a bathroom with a shower – the only thing left is probably a sleeping space, but sometimes people just tend to sleep in the big room between all the gear. 😀 ”
THE 5088
“There’s probably not any console in the world that sounds hotter than this final creation of Rupert’s. It is the most advanced thing, it’s a spaceship, it sends engineers to the moon – and he created it. It creates value. It’s probably also the most easy workflow console I can think of. People do not need a million buttons to do their work – people want efficiency, not difficulty finding a solution after hours. This is the ultimate brain that a studio can have, and the best choice in our place. It will never be replaced.”
“Finally, I would to just say a big thank you to everybody that made this place happen. There are no words for how I can thank the people, the teams, engineers etc. that realized this. I want to give a big thank you to the Rupert Neve team and the socials team that eventually stumbled on my Instagram of the studio; I have been waiting many years for this moment to come, so I could really internationally share how awesome my place truly is and how much love and effort I have put into it. Thanks!”
