studio break in

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pucho812

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Oct 4, 2004
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O.k. I know  we have a thread for stolen gear but I wanted to post this here as it will easily get more visability. I am thankful that this didn't happen to us but it sucks that it happened to someone else. When we first had our studio spot, there was an attempt  to gain access using a cutting torch on our steel door to the world.  The thieves fled before  they got inside,  and  we removed the screwed up door. In its place we put an even more heavy duty door to the outside world.  For a week until the new door was in, we lived at the studio round the clock, we still do but we are not sleeping with ye old shotgun and a line of sight to the door in case of break in.  Well it looks like a recent studio transplant from points beyond to L.A. had a break in and stuff was stolen. From the looks of his list and what was said some of it is pretty custom stuff so easy to spot.  For the rest of us this serves as a reminder to keep records up to date and to be ready in case this happens.  I don't know if anyone knows the person and their studio/services, I do not know them personally but I would like to think they would do the same if I reported stolen equipment. Us audio folks need to stick together.

I just found this on gearslutz and I think Thor is not on Facebook so pasting it here might be a good idea anyway:

Dear friends and colleagues,

it's with great sadness that I have to inform you my studio has been burgled, here in Los Angeles, and cleaned out. The gear was still in boxes and hadn't yet been set up. Almost all of it is still set to 220v (I moved to the US recently, all 110v here), some of the pieces need to be modded to work here and won't as they are currently configured. I'm dealing with insurance now, but it's unclear whether my policy will cover it at all, but that's another discussion.

It means that our mission of providing quality audio for music, film and television, and bringing up and mentoring a new generation of female audio engineers will not be able to continue at the present time. At least not until we figure out if and what was covered and what options we have moving forward.

The studio represented over 15 years of hard work and investment, and we had some very unique pieces of gear that might prove difficult to sell, or are at least unusual enough to be easy to spot.

I would be very grateful if you could be on the lookout for the gear that was stolen, and let me know if you see anything so that I can pass the info along to the police.

Unfortunately, I didn't write down the serial number of every single item, and realize that it's nearly impossible to identify some items without it. I'll include them anyway as many of the items aren't very common, and have contacted all my vendors to secure as much info (including s/n) as possible.

I still need to sort through the mess the thieves left, and may end up adding more items to the list as I finish up the inventory for insurance and the police. This is what I know is missing at present.

Monitoring:
5 Magnepan 3.6QR in off-white with cherry trim - packed in 3 boxes (s/n: 713xx)
5 Hexateq custom Hypex reference monoblocks (black cubes about 20cm/8" to a side) (s/n: n/a) with my logo on the cases
2 Transparent Audio Reference BiCable (s/n: 313xxx)
2 Pelonis 4288 speakers with 19" rack mount amplifier (s/n: )
JL Audio Fathom f112 (s/n: C00xxxxx)

2 pair of speaker stands

bel canto eVo 200.4 4 channel amplifier (s/n: )

Stereo set of Dorrough 40-C2 loudness meters (20dB headroom model) in 2U rack

I/O control:
Crookwood iMon custom 5.1 surround console in oak desktop frame
3 Crookwood matrix racks, one brain, two workers

Processing:
Weiss DS1-MK3 (s/n: )
SPL PQ EQ black faceplate (s/n: 16.1540.xxxxx)
Manley Vari-Mu, black with gold faceplate, red knobs and red VU lights (s/n: MSLC6 xxx), this should be pretty easy to spot, it's the only one like it. It was Fletcher's personal unit before I bought it.
API 2500 (s/n: )
Millenia NSEQ-2 with Fred Forssell mods (s/n: )
Crane Song STC-8/M (s/n: L682xxx)
Crane Song HEDD-192 (s/n: H683xxx)
Speck ASC (s/n: A00xxx)

Playback:
Michelle Gyrodec SE mark IV (s/n: )
Origin Live modded Rega RB250 arm (s/n: )
Audio Technica OC9ML/2 MC pickup (s/n: )
Graham Slee Reflex Era Gold
Graham Slee Elevator EXP

Meridian 506 CD player (s/n: )
Oppo BDP-105 (s/n: )

Bang & Olufsen Beocord 9000 cassette player

DBX 160X (s/n: 91150xxx)
DOLBY 363 SR/A with 2 I/O cards (s/n: )

Recording:
Stellavox SM-8 (s/n: 803.xxx)
Stellavox power supply
Stellavox Big Reel Adapter
Custom interface cables

About 20 10" reels of RMGi SM900 on metal flanged reels

Neumann KM84i matched pair in original boxes (s/n: 50xx & 50xx)
Neumann TLM103 in original box (s/n: 154xx)
Neumann spider for TLM103
Microtech Gefell m952 (s/n: 109xx)
Microtech Gefell m952 (s/n: 968xx)
Microtech Gefell M70 (s/n: 113xx)
Microtech Gefell M70 (s/n: ?)
Microtech Gefell UM70 (s/n: 12xx)
Microtech Gefell UM70 (s/n: 66xx)
B&K 4006 in B&K box (s/n: 1846xxx)
B&K 4006 in B&K box (s/n: 1533xxx)

Grace Spacebar for Auro-3D 9.1 surround in custom bag my mother made for it with the studio name embroidered across it. Thanks, mom.

Cabling. Miles and miles of XLRs, d-sub harnesses for the Crookwood, custom cables for the Stellavox, for the Auro-3D recording setup, etc.

Yamaha AW4416 (s/n: QNO1xxx)

Computer:
MacPro tower 5,1 with upgraded CPU/GPU and RAM (s/n: )
MacPro has 3 RAID 1TB drives and 1TB SSD boot drive

Dell 23" monitor U2312HMt (s/n: )

MacMini (s/n: )
MacMini (s/n: C07LV0PTxxxx)

EUPHONIX MC MIX
Avid Artist MC MIX
Avid Artist Mc Control

More as I sort through and see what's left. I have photos of pretty much everything and can add those if needed.

I will try and run sessions out of colleagues' rooms in the meantime.

If anyone has any experience or advice in dealing with US insurance companies, please PM me.

Thor

__________________
Sonovo
Stereo + Surround - Mastering + Production
Stavanger, Norway - Los Angeles, California
 
Man they must have a had a HUGE truck to take all that stuff away! So sorry to hear about that!!

A good alarm system would go a long way too...
 
Man they must have a had a HUGE truck to take all that stuff away! So sorry to hear about that!!

A good alarm system would go a long way too...
Unfortunately, security systems also leave us a little to confident and lazy about security. I have some friends who are "those types of people" who like to look around in the studio and tell me how they'd go about robbing the studio if they weren't the ones tasked with retrieving the equipment in the event something like that ever happens. After several rounds of them doing this, I'm not sure there actually is a way of preventing it short of hiring a guard to remain there 24-7.
My best advice for finding who robbed them is to check cameras from the past 3 months. The person who robbed them was definitely inside the studio paying attention to doors and looking around for cameras, what type of camera system, etc. It was also recent enough to know they hadn't made any big changes to their security.

My advice to everyone else is:
Make sure your cameras backup everything to the cloud or somewhere off location for at least 6 months and have cameras watching EVERYTHING. They'll likely cut your cable and phone lines before they enter so your cameras might not catch them but, like I said, there will be someone a little too curious about your doors and cameras on the backup video if you watch everything over again.
If your cameras DO catch them in the act for at least a moment but their face is covered, remember that skeletal measurements are as unique as faces and fingerprints. The FBI probably isn't gonna run your video through their software that identifies body measurements because it requires taking actual measurements in your facility where the video was taken but you still may be able to identify at least one of the burglars by their body measurements visually then go back and watch them more closely on the video from when they were scoping out your studio.

I think I'm gonna order more cameras tonight after seeing this. If anyone ever got my C800-G I'd send out the biggest street gang in Detroit to go retrieve it but I really don't want it to ever come to that.
 
My studio got robbed about 3 years back, was taken for about $17k. I actually found out who did it with definitive proof, and the police declined to do anything. gotta love that!
 
My studio got robbed about 3 years back, was taken for about $17k. I actually found out who did it with definitive proof, and the police declined to do anything. gotta love that!
Don't you hate that?
I got robbed at gun point once. I tried stressing to the cops that they got my phone and it doesn't' turn off without the password so it should be easy to find them if they move quickly.
One of the cops pulled me aside and informed me nothing was gonna come of it on their end but that he saw my "known associates" on file when they were in the car and actually suggested I send someone to go collect my stuff at the address Google says my phone ends up at. I looked at him confused and said "Then you know those associates will kill them if I do that". He shrugged and gave me the look of "and your point is??".
That's actually where I got the idea to base my security around collecting enough information so that I can identify the person well enough to know who to look for rather than collecting enough evidence for police to build a case. Maybe they'll actually try if someone robs me off $100k+ worth of equipment but, for the most part, it seems safer to just have friends that are scarier than whoever is dumb enough to rob this studio. It's a shame.
 
but, for the most part, it seems safer to just have friends that are scarier than whoever is dumb enough to rob this studio. It's a shame.
This is quite literally what i had to resort to, and by that time they had moved most of the items and all i got was a crash cymbal, a bass with the pickups/pickgaurd yanked out and a microphone. one of many in a long line of police let-downs i have experienced here
 
We had an incident at the studio recently. By an act of being forgetful and not being vigilant, one of our staff managed to lock someone in the studio. The person locked in was not supposed to be there and snuck past a film shoot that had been going on with our neighbor and a shared parking lot. I assume they were waiting till everyone left and was going to steal stuff.
When the alarm went off. We could trace where they went by the sensors they triggered. Looks like they set the alarm off and left. Nothing was taken, we got lucky.
Where it gets weird was lapd. They came after a long wait. Then refused to take a report basically stating that how do they know we didn’t lock the person in on purpose. It was weird how they were treating it like we were the perpetrators,criminals.
 
We had an incident at the studio recently. By an act of being forgetful and not being vigilant, one of our staff managed to lock someone in the studio. The person locked in was not supposed to be there and snuck past a film shoot that had been going on with our neighbor and a shared parking lot. I assume they were waiting till everyone left and was going to steal stuff.
When the alarm went off. We could trace where they went by the sensors they triggered. Looks like they set the alarm off and left. Nothing was taken, we got lucky.
Where it gets weird was lapd. They came after a long wait. Then refused to take a report basically stating that how do they know we didn’t lock the person in on purpose. It was weird how they were treating it like we were the perpetrators,criminals.
Sounds like they just didn't wanna do the paperwork
 
Crime sucks, and there are some people in bad situations.

The postmaster across the street asked me to keep an eye on the PO building, because some homeless person had been stealing electricity from them overnight. He(?) left his extension cord behind, when somebody spooked him last night.

She said not to shoot him, just call the county sheriff. This morning there were so many police cars over there,I thought they might be handing out free donuts.

The good news is this is what passes for drama in small town MS.

JR
 
Homeless people are always caught trying to charge their mobile phone .
Here now the buses at least provide a USB charge point per seat , intercounty buses even provide a mains socket .
There only dumping surplus current off the alternator either way .
 
The postmaster thinks it's some local guy whose house burned down recently. He may need more than a phone charge.

[edit- I've been without a roof and bed while on the road before, but I had my car to sleep in. Not comfortable but temporary. [/edit]

JR
 
Crime sucks, and there are some people in bad situations.

The postmaster across the street asked me to keep an eye on the PO building, because some homeless person had been stealing electricity from them overnight. He(?) left his extension cord behind, when somebody spooked him last night.

She said not to shoot him, just call the county sheriff. This morning there were so many police cars over there,I thought they might be handing out free donuts.

The good news is this is what passes for drama in small town MS.

JR
When we had the George Floyd marches/protests we stayed at the studio 24/7 for a few weeks in cause of breakin's, etc. Our neighbors noticed and were thankful we were visible and that it kept away the bad folks. I don't know if it worked but I did enjoy sleeping at studio and late night BBQ cooking. We ate like kings
 
The postmaster thinks it's some local guy whose house burned down recently. He may need more than a phone charge.

[edit- I've been without a roof and bed while on the road before, but I had my car to sleep in. Not comfortable but temporary. [/edit]

JR
If somebody's house burns down and they want to snag some power, I'd more than happily plug a cord in for them. My only worry would be an electrical fire, so an extension cord to give him distance would solve that.
 
I am just repeating the rumor the postmaster told me...

If I ever see him and talk to him I'll pass along your generous offer. I was looking for him last night (as the postmaster requested) and didn't see him, but I didn't look very hard.

JR

PS; I don't have any humans lurking around my property, mostly just passing through. I do see multiple cats. My overly generous cat loving neighbor feeds strays and has at least a half dozen hanging around at any point. The don't like each other that much so try to map out their own territory on my property. Many mornings I find muddy cat prints on my car's roof and back window.
 

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