McClear Place

McClear Place was the recording studio where the first and second season of Sailor Moon were recorded by Optimum Productions, and produced by DiC Entertainment.

Salvatore Grimaldi and Mark Baldi worked at McClear Place and were also credited as the ADR Engineers/Audio Mixer Engineers for the first 65 episodes.

Owned by McClear Place Studios/McClear Pathe (later known as McClear/Digital) since 1979, the studio, built in the late 1940s, was located at 225 Mutual Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

McClear Place was Toronto's longest running recording studio operation. Although generally used as a music recording studio, numerous CBC TV show recordings were also done here.

In 2005 McClear/Digital files for bankruptcy, and by October of that year, all of it's assets had been sold off. In 2010, it was purchased by Best Western Primrose Hotel and in August 2010, the building was razed for an underground parking lot.

History
Back in 1948, a newcomer to the Toronto Radio business, CHUM Ltd. decided to build its first Live Studios and chose the Mutual St. location. The block of land was originally owned by bookseller, Thomas McClear in 1875 resulting in the lane way beside the building being named after him.

Around the same time, RCA Records started a recording operation in the Royal York Hotel. With the arrival of Television, Radio changed from live broadcasting to DJ's spinning the hits. CHUM no longer needed it's studios. On the other hand, RCA was expanding and needed a new home.

So in 1954 the studio changed hands and RCA moved in it's three input console complete with a "Phantom channel", five microphones, two mono Ampex 300 machines and a Presto lathe.Over the years, the equipment complement went from five microphones to 150 microphones. Recording went from mono to stereo, three track, sixteen tracks and finally 24 tracks in 1976. The Studios were sold to McClear Place Studios Ltd. in 1979. McClear Place quickly expanded from two to three studios and in 1990 acquired the Pathé Film Post Production Studios, renaming itself "McClear Pathé." In 1999 McClear joined forces with Digital Music + Post to form McClear/Digital. Some of the famous acts recording in the early years included Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme, Elizabeth Taylor, Red Skelton, Vincent Price, B.T.O., The Who, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, Ringo Starr, George Carlin, Steve Winwood, Chubby Checker and RUSH.

The studio now boasts four recording studios (two with 56 input SSL consoles) and Four Production/Edit suites with two ProTools 24 hard disk systems and a fairlight MFX in it's complement. Technology changes, people change and companies have changed, but the building that we call "home," remains Toronto's longest running recording studio operation with 52 years of continuous history.