Tres Virgos Studio,

"Status Record Ready" Allen & Robin at Granny's House, Reno, NV for Jas McCullum Sessions 1987

In the Spring of 1974, Allen Rice and Robin Yeager met in a Recording Arts Class. As a local Marin County musician, Robin had been playing his Acoustic Guitar at various venues around the Bay Area's "Steak & Ale" circuit. In his travels he met Mike Stevens, a very talented guitarist and singer. The three realized they all shared September as a birthday month (Allen and Robin the same day 10 years apart) hence the Tres Virgos Studio. They started their first studio on West California Ave on 5 acres of land high up Mt Tam. Allen's tremendous knowledge of audio and wiring, coupled with Mikes ability as a CPA, gave the partnership a good foundation for a studio. It started as a song writing studio, and Robin would invite friends up for rehearsal and get his engineering chops down. Soon, the studio upgraded from a 4 track to a 1" 8 track (Otari MTR 7308) and added a new Soundcraft Series 2 32x16 console, Ampex ATR 100 mastering deck and UREI 813 speakers. Building expansion happened simultaneously to accommodate a bigger control room and bigger music room. Many sessions were done here as a pre-production studio for musicians heading for the larger studios to do their albums. Many sessions were song writing demos, and many sessions were band demos. Many sessions were for the in-house production company, Tamarin, and were written for radio commercials. There were many, many, MANY sessions done in this small studio. The precious and wonderful memories from such a funky little converted garage on Mt Tam are indelibly printed on my mind.

In 1978 construction was started on the new TVS in San Rafael, CA. Allen's insatiable thirst for more knowledge had led him to a conference called Synergistic Audio Conference (Syn-Aud-Con). At this conference, Allen met Chips Davis, Father of the Live-End-Dead-End (LEDE) theory of acoustics design. This was a radical departure from previous designs and treated sound in scientific terms of a given frequency and the time it takes (in milliseconds) to arrive at the mixing position. The studio would take 2 years to build and was an incredible feat to accomplish. It was also a gloriously beautiful studio inside, thanks to the tremendous will of Allen Rice. 

This site is dedicated to Allen's memory. He died Aug 11, 2006 doing what he loved most, racing Super Bikes at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma. 

Herein lie stories, pictures and music of those magic 11 years. If you have memories, pictures or music of your own from either of the Tres Virgos Studios, please feel free to contact Robin Yeager by email at :

rob.yeager@comcast.net                                                         Wall Layers, Door Jam, TVS SR

(In the unfinished control room of TVS San Rafael with Robin, Beverly, Allen, David Schwartz)

 I love hearing from all of my music friends!

Robin Yeager