They’ve established a catalogue of stellar archive jazz recordings and contemporary releases, built a reputation for faultless vinyl remastering and even released their own turntable. Mike Gerber meets Darrel Sheinman, the man behind the Gearbox label

Mike Gerber

GEARBOX

You’ve thrived as a trader in London’s financial sector, then established a successful maritime security business… so, what do you do next? What Darrel Sheinman did, in 2009, was found a record label dedicated to producing quality audiophile vinyl.

Initially, it was something of a hobby for an audio enthusiast who in his downtime played drums, mainly in funk combos: “Because I played drums, I used to do my own recordings using cassette machines, overdubs, and playing along to one until the degradation got bad,” Sheinman tells us. “I’ve always had a fascination with tape. My dad had a reel-to-reel machine I used to play with and splice with when I was a kid.”

It was while attending an N.E.R.D gig that the yearning to start a label took hold: “they were playing with two drummers, they were so tight. I thought, ‘this is great’. So I tried to get the rights, because my wife’s best friend was doing the live streaming and video. But I was nobody, so no way would I get a licence to release that.

“So I went to the BBC and looked for rights I could easily get, things like radio broadcasts, and jazz for vinyl rights was easy. Hence we did the Tubby Hayes Jazz For Moderns, our first release.”

Tenor saxophonist and vibraphonist Hayes was one of Britain’s most revered jazz musicians, and the album was a first-ever commercial release of a 1962 broadcast. Archive-first releases continue to be a significant component of Gearbox’s burgeoning catalogue; the latest such is Dexter Gordon’s Fried Bananas, mastered from VPRO radio broadcast tapes recorded during the celebrated American jazz saxophonist’s 1972 Netherlands tour.

Sheinman has equipped the Gearbox premises, near London’s King’s Cross station, with a combination of some of the finest vintage and contemporary studio kit attainable. the mastering studio comprises four reel-to-reel professional tape recorders: a 1969 Studer H37 valve three- and fourtrack 1/2-inch, similar to the machine on which the Beatles recorded Sgt Pepper’s…; a 1965 Studer C37 1/4-inch ‘interchangeable’, again valve – reputedly one of the bestsounding tape machines ever – and a Studer A671, with interchangeable quarter- and half-track facility for playback of broadcast and domestic tapes where, for economy, both sides of the tape were used. This impressive quartet is rounded off by a 1965 ex-Deccamodi thed Philips Pro51 two-channel 1/4-inch tape machine with 30-inch-per-second tape-speed capability – not valve, but using sonically superior Germanium transistors.