Recording studios and smoking...

unclebill98

So, just put the finishing touches to mine and todays session had smokers.

Allowing recording artists to smoke in your studio is a good or bad thing?

You normally see gear for sale that states "from a smoke free studio" etc but just wondering what you guys see as the pro's and con's of allowing it?

stateofflux

unclebill98 wrote: »

So, just put the finishing touches to mine and todays session had smokers.

Allowing recording artists to smoke in your studio is a good or bad thing?

You normally see gear for sale that states "from a smoke free studio" etc but just wondering what you guys see as the pro's and con's of allowing it?

it is a bad thing if you are losing business from non smokers. re equipment: its mainly about smell & residue buildup over time

PaulBrewer

Smoking is illegal in a work place - Ive not been in a studio that allows smoking in in a long time.

I think people expect not to be allowed to smoke these days anyway.

sweetie

apart from the possible degradation / depreciation of your gear surely the next non-smokers to use it may be put off? I would refuse to take a hotel room that had been smoked in previous to my visit, similarly Id be put off by the stale odour in a studio!

Solair

It's completely illegal and you're leaving yourself open to fines should anyone complain. Not only that, but you've a legal obligation to provide anyone working in that studio with a smoke free workplace.

So you're leaving yourself open to all sorts of possible legal action.

Other than that you'll damage equipment by coating contacts, microphone components, fader contacts etc with smoke particles. Studios by their nature aren't always well ventilated.

Also for non smokers (the majority of people these days) your studio will smell bad

If you've sound absorbing tiles or upholstery it will absorb smoke and that smell won't shift for years!

Legally speaking, nobody should be smoking indoors in any part of a workplace.

That has been the case long before it was extended to pubs etc

No recording artist would expect to be able to smoke in a studio in this day and age!

Perhaps get some garden furniture and make a smoking area outside ?

old gregg

Besides, if you allow them to smoke in the studio they'll eventually start lighting up them jazz cigarettes and you'll never get rid of them :P

studiorat

Ah, God be with the days! The auld studio was the last bastion of smoking in the work place, even before the laws came in. Getting rid of tape killed smoking in the studio really. The auld rewind was always an excellent opportunity to light up. And I could never do a drop-in without a fag in my mouth.

I've always wondered if you could get away with smoking in the studio because you could look at in the same way as a hotel for example. Is a residential recording facility obliged to enforce the ban for example? And then you could always plead that it was in fact a psychiatric ward.

That said, I've been in plenty of sessions where you'd have an "international artist" light up and no one would say a word. I suppose because one you're looking at loosing a couple of weeks of a session and secondly you can't really expect said rock star to stand outside the gaff having a smoke.

Generally these days, we use a designated area and definitely not the control room and not even for the jazz woodbines. But I certainly don't smoke nearly as much as I used to during recording sessions, but we do take more breaks than we used to.

unclebill98

Some great points.

To add I made them go outside, one thought he could but the other never sparked up at all.

I'm no big studio so no worries telling folks not to. As for it being against the law, not sure the vast majority of studios
on the small scale, if they allow would find themselves in trouble.

On another note I do the same with hotel rooms even though I was a smoker.