Many of the songs sent in to Mix Rescue do indeed need salvaging, but occasionally something comes in that makes a pleasant break from the norm. Jesper Buhl's recording of his jazz trio was one such welcome submission, where he had managed to capture respectable signals from the ensemble performance, despite budget constraints, by careful placement and isolation of the piano, upright bass and drums within his home studio, which is a 7.5 x 7.5m converted garage.

The bass player, Rico De Jeer, was set up towards one corner of the carpeted room, allowing him to be isolated pretty efficiently from the other instruments using three large studio panels (complete with glazed sections to preserve sight lines). The drums and piano were set up more towards the other side of the room, and Jesper had tried to reduce the levels of drum spill on the piano mics by turning the instrument so that its lid opened in the opposite direction, as well as by arranging four 2 x 4-foot absorber panels around it.

The drums were played by Chris Barchet and recorded with a pair of Oktava MK012 cardioid small-diaphragm condensers running through Rane MS1B preamps into an Emu 1820M soundcard, the audio interface for Jesper's Cubase SX2 PC recording system (itself isolated in a purpose-built box to reduce noise). In addition to these mics, the bass drum had an AKG D112 in front of it and a Superlux ECOH6A large-diaphragm electret mic on the batter-head side. There was a Shure SM57 on the snare, as well as a separate small-diaphragm condenser on the hi-hat — although session gremlins ate the hi-hat signal before it could reach the recorder, so this last mic's signal wasn't available for mixing. All of the close mics were amplified by a Behringer ADA8000 preamp/converter before reaching the audio interface.

Another Superlux ECOH6A microphone was set up in front of the bass, after Jesper had tried and rejected both an SE Electronics SE2200A and a Studio Projects B3 in this role, while his Grotriam-Steinweg baby grand piano had two Studio Projects C3 mics (in cardioid mode) in a spaced stereo configuration over the strings. These mics also passed through the ADA8000.

Jesper's original mix was already sensibly balanced...