Casbah Recording

About me:

Casbah is a state-of-the-art, Pro Tools-based recording studio serving the LA/Orange County area. Located in beautiful downtown Fullerton, CA, Casbah offers recording, mixing, and mastering services for a broad range of clients at competitive rates. Owner, and famed producer, Jon St. James has worked successfully in the music business for over 25 years, producing number one singles and platinum records. With his vast experience, he has established a small, and extremely efficient working environment with the capability to facilitate a number of jobs with superior results. We encourage you to look around at what the studio has to offer and see if we can meet your needs.

Visit our website at www.casbahrecording.com and you'll find a list of our clients, information about the people who run the place, photos of the studio and our equipment, information about the services we offer, a form to contact us by, and the answers to just about any other questions you may have.

History

The original Casbah Recording Studio or simply Casbah was a recording studio in the Orange County suburb of Fullerton, California that helped to spawn several highly successful acts, including Berlin, Stacey Q, and Social Distortion.

When the Orange County-based producer/musician Jon St. James founded Casbah studio with partners Charles "Chaz" Ramirez, Alex Stelzner and Alan Hawley in the late 1970s, it boasted only a TEAC 8-track tape machine, a mixing console and a few effects. St. James purchased additional electronic devices and rack mount equipment using money he earned doing sound-alike recordings of popular songs for television and radio.

In the early 80s, St. James replaced the 8-track TEAC with a 16 track, which was considered the standard in many studios at the time. It was on that reel-to-reel tape machine that Berlin's blockbuster Pleasure Victim EP and Stacey Q's Better Than Heaven album were recorded. The Casbah attracted talent in a variety of genres.

Engineer and producer Michael Hutchinson recalls: "Considering it wasn’t a five star studio...you could consider it a three star. They had the basics. I mean, they had some sort of a plate or spring reverb unit, some delays and a couple of chorus boxes, and things like that. Most of that stuff was done on a really tight budget. You have to give kudos to the guy who did the Berlin record (Pleasure Victim), because it sounds like it was done on much more expensive gear."

The Casbah attracted a variety of talent, including Righteous Brothers keyboardist John Van Tongeren and Berlin drummer, synthesist and producer Dan Van Patten, who lent their abilities to a variety of projects. After the success of Stacey Q's Better Than Heaven album, St. James deferred ownership of The Casbah to his only remaining partner Chaz Ramirez and opened the new Formula 1 studio in La Habra. F1, as the studio was known, hosted a wide variety of acts, ranging from Jon Anderson of Yes, to No Doubt to Tenacious D.

St. James eventually sold F1 and built a new studio and called it Casbah in honor of his original partner Chaz who has since passed away.