Bob Ludwig
Bob is a renowned mastering engineer, working on a huge number of famous albums including U2’s ‘Joshua Tree’ which had been engineered by Dave Meegan. “When you get him to master an album, when he leaves the room it isn’t finished – he takes it home, checks it out, comes back the next day and changes things that he found were wrong at home,” says Dave. “He was the instigator of that school, he had a very unique way, he was one of three people that made everyone want to go to America to master.”
While at Masterdisk, NY, the first album Bob worked on for Rush was ‘Permanent Waves’. Soon after he left Masterdisk and set up his own facility at Gateway Mastering Studios, Portland, Maine, attending first to ‘Exit…Stage Left’. For ‘Grace Under Pressure’ and ‘Hold Your Fire’ he was assisted by Brian Lee. He has since been involved in mastering every Rush album until ‘Vapor Trails’, usually accompanied by Geddy who would review the masters before they went to acetate. In 1997, Bob and Brian also worked on remastering the Rush series.
Bob is known for taking on apprentices, of which Brian is one. A more recent student was Adam Ayan, who went on to master ‘Rush in Rio’. Bob has also mastered just about everybody, indeed there are far too many to list, but they include ‘Scooby Doo’.