You have no idea how precious this is to me! I might be probably the only person on the planet who's favorite Metallica is this very era. For me nothing compares to the depth of it, the songs and especially the sound. Thank you so much for sharing this!

man, you are amazing for doing this...I enjoy your LOAD videos a lot...so inspiring

I've been waiting for this level of detail for 30 years. Always loved the depth in the production on this album and ReLoad. So much more than one clean and one dirty guitar sound. Layers.

oh i love these studio notes tours. do many more of these. i dont even care what album. best section in sound on sound mag for years

Hi Mr Henry!, The samples used by Randy come from a collection of one shots known as the Vancouver samples. They included Death Kick, Ludwig Dry, and Rockhead, and legend has it they were created by Bob Rock in the late 80s or early 90s. Randy continued to use them, according to people who claim to have worked with him, and they are embedded in the highest velocity layers of Toontrack's Rock Solid library. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find the original individual files that were available online in the early 2000s, but few people were willing to share them. According to an engineer who has them but refuses to share, they aren't anything special on their own, but they complement each other perfectly and don't come from a module. I don't know the details of their creation. By the way, excellent video and excellent dedication you've shown in providing us with this knowledge! Eternal gratitude from all fans of Randy's and Bob's work!

I was hanging around the plant a lot in the late nineties and moved to San Francisco in 99. Metallica where in Studio A a lot which is where the shots of the parquet floor comes from. The paid to have the calling raised and it wa one of the best drum rooms in the world.  My Buddy Kent Matcke who ended up making a bunch of records with me was the assistant engineer on Load and Loaded, i recognise his scrawl . He told me about the Y cable trick and I've used it ever since. An API 550 is the secret sauce.

I always thought the black album and Load/reload had the best drum/bass/guitar tones. Thank you so much for doing these deep dives!! Please keep them coming!! I also try to recreate these sounds in my DAW and I love to see your process! Do as much drum/bass/guitar content from this era as possible! It’s helping me out a ton!!

This is absolutely amazing. Thank You! The detail these notes carry is otherworldly. Wow

Another amazing aspect of what you do!!! Love it man, keep killing it!!

Broooooo, THANK YOU FOR THIS. Even if this isn’t my favorite Metallica era, I’m still so fascinated and love the sounds they got on this album. I’m only 12 seconds into the video lol

That was a really cool look into Bleeding Me. Kudos to ya

Yes interested in Tom top/bottom mic video

Definitely want to see a video on the Y cable on the floor tom, that's so nutty

Man, you are doing such an amazing job !
The effort you put into these videos is incredible.
Thanks for your content !

Ps:
Please do a video about the y cable wired out of phase !

Greetings

Yes to the x/y cable video.

Just got to the end of the video. Really really really great!! Love content like this

Jason newsted has said multiple times publicly that both Randy staub and Zach Harmon are two guys who are hugely responsible for the success this band had in the 90s. Randy was a beast

fkn sick dude!!!

Related side note: I've been watching the making of Hardwired (here on YT). To see how Greg Fidelman & Mike Gillies navigate these massive sessions from the pre-production stage right up to the mixing is insane! In SOS mag Fidelman said there was 'no less than 38 drum tacks' ... lol!

I'll be expecting my badge of honour in the mail, sir!!😁 Fantastic job, JP – and such a great idea for a video. Immensely educational to hear you speak about this topic!

Not much of a Metallica fan, but if there's ever this much detail into a recording session, I don't give a hoot who it is, I'm into it.   Kind of incredible the level of detail they went to, and someone was pretty good at drawing.  
Wish there were some of these for Zeppelin....that would put me thru the roof with excitement, although I reckon the video would probably only need to be about four and a half minutes, because I would reckon that for the whole band, they used about 20% of the inputs they used for just Lars.  3 mics on the drums, one each on the guitar and bass, a vocal mic and a room mic or two.  Probably woulda been fairly common to have tracks left over when they were using 16 track.  Crazy how complicated recording got over the course of about 20 years.  

First studio I worked out of had a couple of 165As.  Have never come across one since then (early 90s), but really wouldn't mind having one myself.  They did a really good job of compressing and not doing much else.  No vibe, just clean gain reduction, although I never got into the weeds with the manual settings on that thing as I didn't know what I was doing back then, just left it on Overeasy and it worked great for what I was doing.

Anyway, thanks for doing this.....super interesting.