The only business connection between Strawberry Recording Studios and the one-year-old Strawberry mastering room situated in London's Strutton Ground is that Ric Dickson is a director/partner in both organisations. The other two directors of Strawberry Mastering are David Moores of the well known Liverpool family, and cutting engineer Melvyn Abrahams. When first approached by the other two directors, Melvyn's attitude towards opening 'yet another London mastering suite' was simply that it would have to be the best. Anything less would not attract the business to cover investment. I presume that while managing 10cc and later Godley and Creme, Dickson had noted their insistence on having Melvyn (then at IBC) master all their records. After various discussions the cutting engineer was given the green light and virtually a free hand to choose whatever equipment he wished on a reasonable budget — including the lease on the building their overall investment is approximately a quarter of a million pounds.

A plan of action was agreed: To elevate cutting from a backroom process to a level at which artists and producers can complete the final stage of their recording in surroundings comparable with the studios in which they may have spent anything up to several months. Also their project would offer 'state of the art' equipment facilities. As we all know recording budgets can run into hundreds of thousands these days. For the sake of a relatively small investment — £64 for lacquers plus £30 per hour if in attendance — you can wrap up the job in style. Melvyn told me that three hours would be the maximum he'd expect to spend on mastering an album unless the tape was particularly problematic.

So the most you're likely to spend on cutting an album at Strawberry is £154. Should you be happy to leave Melvyn to get on with the job on his own, the cost is similar to other top mastering studios — that is a straight £64 inclusive for a double-sided album. The Bee Gees were happy to leave the UK mastering of their current single to Strawberry. Roxy Music, on the other hand, chose to spend two days working with Mel.

Strutton Ground is a street market near the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street, Westminster. The large reception area at number 30 leads through to the disc playback suite/lounge which has comfortable seating for at least 15 people. The actual cutting room is Eastlake, as Melvyn explained.

'Although all the acoustic panels were designed by Eastlake, Ric Dickson chose all the interior finishings for the room, disc playback suite and reception. That is why our place looks different from the usual Eastlake room. We haven't got the usual brown shagpile carpet, black ceiling and 747 aircraft seats. The sunken area, fireplace and everything else was thought out by Ric. He even had his own gardener come in to do the landscaping in the cutting room.

'We have two tape machines, both Studer A80s. The playback machine is purely to go to the lathe and cutting amp and is a 30, 15 and 7½in/s model so we can deal with any speed of recording. We only have Dolby playback machines for the playback tape machine. We can also put in K9 cards in there for dbx. We also have Telcom cards so we can cope with any noise reduction system. We have record Dolbys for the copying machine.

'Then we have the Audio and Design Vocal Stresser 769 unit which has an equaliser on one side which I find good because it's very sharp. On the other side there is a compressor, limiter and expander. Basically I only use the peak limiter on it in the eq but on this unit you can in fact limit a 'phantom' eq which in fact you're adding but it's not going on audio, you're just limiting a signal that you want taken out. That's how you can time it. So that is a very versatile unit. We then have Teletronics LA4 limiters which I like because they've got a very mild sound and they cruise. They're not sharp. We then have two sets of Helios parametric equalisers which we had made up for us by Dick Swettenham but they're doubled as well because there is a channel underneath which is an advancing knob that you can't touch. So we're affecting the lathe now on the bass end. There are two sets which are switchable by means of an FET transistor switch which doesn't click. That means you can switch between tracks on separate eqs.

'We then have the NTP Phase Oscilloscope, the NTP light beam meter for reading our levels, and the Neumann phase meter. Then there is the Ortofon CPS cutting control unit, the main unit which switches signal to the cutter head. That gives you the main cutting level although we have faders. It also gives you monitoring level, shelving frequencies and phase reversal, left- or right-hand channels. We have adjusted slightly to allow us to press a "mono monitor only" button. This is because nine times out of 10 while you're cutting, a producer will ask to hear what's going on in mono. Normally in most cutting rooms if you're giving it to them in mono you're also cutting in mono. This way a stereo cut is unaffected. You always get nagged for the one thing you haven't got so we've put in every conceivable facility.

'We have the Ortofon STL: it's a stereo top limiter, which I very rarely use. I keep it in the circuit for the protection of the cutting head, but if there is something simple I always prefer to eq it rather than let something limit it to hell. I think you can tell when those top limiters have been used on a cut. We have varispeed on both tape machines which I think is important because we're not next to a studio and therefore must be able to cope if someone wants to speed up a tape. We also have a Master Room echo coming in so there's nothing we can't do.

'A feature of the mixer is a patch bay. If a piece of equipment breaks down we can re-route or plug something else in. We can put in or take out any piece of equipment. Also we can check signals in and out of Dolbys everywhere. The pièce de résistance of the mixer is our bypass system which is indicated by LED readouts on the desk. This is how it works. Normally if you are working with a non-Dolby tape you'd press the NR Out button on the Dolbys so they will be non-functional, but you'd still be going through the transformers and transistors of the Dolby unit as well as the switches. We have bypass switches for all units now to bypass them totally. So we can in fact have a pure signal going from the tape to the cutter head or if you wish have any one piece of equipment between the two. So therefore our signal must be cleaner.

'The same goes for the cutting amps. We've bypassed a couple of transformers there which Ortofon said would not do the cutting head any harm. I believe this is the reason for our success in getting top on cleanly, we're bypassing all the rotten little things going on in the mixer. That is our mixer.'

The electricity supply to the actual cutting room is isolated, coming straight off the main junction, so activity outside the room doesn't result in clicks on the tape. Once again the earth is externally fitted. There is an earth trip so instead of blowing fuses a fault will trip an earth out in the main box. Monitoring is full JBL, not like some Eastlake rooms which are JBL and Gauss. They have the Eastlake bins holding JBL speakers driven by Crown DC 300A amps thus matching the two Strawberry Studios. The main system is completed by Ortofon cutting amps rated at 525 RMS watts per channel, an Ortofon DSS 732 cutter head plus the Neumann VMS 70 lathe.

In Melvyn's experience producers frequently request a cassette copy of what has actually gone on to the lacquer, mainly for personal reference. To meet this demand he has had a Technics cassette deck installed. Once again purely part of the service. He charges £4 a cassette, virtually the price for which he buys in the blank BASF tapes.

In the disc playback lounge, as well as a colour TV which never seems to be switched on, is a Technics disc playback system incorporating twin turntables. With the aid of a switch between the two, instant comparisons between cuts, acetates and test pressings are possible thus eliminating hours of fruitless debate. This relatively simple facility is extremely useful when trying to match an American pressing for instance. A consideration in choosing a Technics system, including their linear phase speakers, was to have a system which is (albeit top of the market) generally available.

Policy is to extend the same type of hospitality at Strawberry Mastering as found at Strawberry North. Mel explained, 'We buy clients lunch or sandwiches. I know people will say: That's generous, you're only charging them £30 an hour. But there are no extras on the bill. After 6 pm we charge £35 but you won't get any extras like a cab home for the engineer and all that. Our rate is exactly what we charge. Bryan Ferry even had cigarettes out of us. We have lagers in but not heavy alcohol, free booze tends to have a disastrous effect on people. Also should anyone wish to come back with test pressings to play back or find they need any help they are welcome free of charge. I think by the time anyone has finished working with us they'll feel they've had their money's worth.'

At first the record companies complained bitterly about the attendance charges. Then when more and more artists explained to them how for a minimal investment compared with overall recording costs better results were being achieved, several majors began booking blocks of cutting time. The list of artists who have cut at Strawberry in the first year is staggering. Perhaps more than anything else the time taken allows artists and producers the time to convey exactly the sounds they are aiming for.

On the subject of engineers Melvyn finds 'the hardest thing is to find good engineers. Today cutting is more and more to do with personalities because anyone can go out and buy a Neumann lathe (providing they have £86 000 to spare!). Steve Rooke who used to be at ISS Pressing is working here with me now, so he has knowledge of what happens to a lacquer after it leaves the cutting room. I don't employ people because they can cut, but on a gut feeling. You must be able to really talk with clients because this cutting is a right patience game now. Sometimes you have to smile as if a tape is quite good even though it has been disastrously mixed. Because of our rates that doesn't happen much, we don't tend to get tapes recorded in little 4-track studios.

'I'd like you to put in the magazine that as far as balance engineers from major studios are concerned they are welcome to give us a call and arrange to come in and watch us cutting for a day because that can only help everyone concerned. In some cases engineers think that as they have recorded and mixed a whole album they know exactly how it should be cut. They can balance, so they've got one up on me because I can't. But I've got one up on them because I can cut. So we should work as a team.'

When it came to the final lining up of the cutting room Melvyn asked Eric Stewart of 10cc to join him and Tom Hidley of Eastlake. 'I don't make albums of pink noise so in my opinion it's not right to line up a room with pink noise. We set up to the same curve as Strawberry Studios using 10cc albums. We used Original Soundtrack, Deceptive Bends and How Dare You because those records were complimented to an amazing degree for the sound achieved. Also in my opinion Eric is the best balance engineer in the country.'

When I spoke recently to Lol Creme about Strawberry Mastering he made it quite clear that he and Kevin Godley had gone there to cut L purely to work with Melvyn.

'Without wanting it to go to his head I must say that Mel is a really superb cutting engineer because he not only knows what he's doing but he also cares. He spends a lot of time getting everything just right before he even makes a trial cut. Kev and I have worked with him for about five or six albums now and we've never had anything less than 100% commitment.

'He takes cuts home and tests them on his own equipment going to incredible lengths to try test pressings out on different pieces of equipment. In America they do your cut and throw you out. That's it: Next one please.

'We've cut at various places in the States but we've always had a better service from Melvyn. So that's the way I feel about the guy as opposed to the equipment. The same situation exists in a recording studio: you can have the best equipment but if the engineer doesn't know what he's doing or doesn't care enough, you'll end up with a crappy record. Everyone that's worked with Mel through our recommendation has stayed with him. I'm just beginning to remember the lengths he went to on Consequences because that was a cutter's nightmare. There were so many frequencies that we put on that album that shouldn't have even been there and Melvyn got them all. We gave him a rough monitor mix twelve months before the project was finished. He then did a dozen or so trial cuts during that year until he got it just the way he wanted it. When we came to do the final cut he knew the recordings inside out (three album set). Funnily enough when we were finishing off Mel and Kev did a cut with Ampex but Kev didn't like it. So they ended up doing it again at 5 o'clock in the morning, of all ironic times.

'As far as the room itself is concerned everything sounds great because they have fantastic monitoring. If your tapes sound good flat, then they sound enhanced at Strawberry. So it's a turn-on just to hear your tapes played back there. Also I think it's pretty true in that you hear what you've got on the tape. He's also got the equipment to deal with the slightest discrepancy. I suppose it is an advantage really because before, when he was at IBC, you relied on him taking the tapes home and listening to them on his own speakers. I think you can be pretty sure that if it sounds right at Strawberry it is right.'

Of the plush surroundings Lol said: 'I don't need that personally but while it's there you may as well make use of it.

Mel makes it a nice day for you, more like a recording studio than a cutting room. A lot of the thought behind the place came from Ric Dickson, credit where it's due. Melvyn also tells good Jewish mother-in-law jokes.'