I'm pretty familiar with both Zero Return and with Jim and Rob, the two guys who built it. It is an interesting mix of weird and classic.
All studios bear the fingerprints of the people who built them, and this is true in the extreme here. Jim ran the original Zero Return studio out of a tiny house in the woods, and it was outfitted with a bunch of second-hand equipment put together in a truly idiosyncratic way. For a start, there was no patch bay. Any time you wanted to patch anything in, you had to find cables and crawl around behind everything. It was a real one-man operation. This is emblematic of Jim's tinkering nature, and he tends to find his own solution for every problem. It is to his credit that he has been able to build an operating studio from such small scraps to start with, and he rightly takes pride in it.
In the current setup, there is s proper control room, but things are still set-up the way Jim and Rob thought would work for them, not according to convention, and there is quite a bit about it that would leave most engineers scratching their heads. The equipment is an odd assortment, and you really do have to work with what it gives you rather than trying to make it into something else.
That said, the acoustics are nice, there's a good collection of high-quality microphones, and I have had a good time when I have worked there.
If I were looking for an opportunity to get my feet wet as an engineer in a studio, especially if I had limited time, I would not try to do it there. There is simply too much about it that is unique to the place to have any relevance to any other studio environment. It could be both frustrating and un-enlightening. If I weren't used to making-do in whatever studio I am dropped into, I would not have had as good a time as I have had there in the past.
I'm not saying the studio isn't capable of making good records, far from it. I have heard many excellent recordings from there by Jim and Rob and others, and the records I've done there I've been happy with. My reservation concerns your novice status and a place that is put together to work in ony one specific way. A way that Jim and Rob have gotten ingrained in, and that they can get around in effortlessly.
If I were interested in having a recording done of my band there, speaking not as an experienced engineer but as a novice and band member, I would have Jim do the engineering and use the opportunity to ask questions and see how he works. If I wanted to run the studio myself, I might favor a place that didn't have so many quirks.
I hope you do go to Zero Return, because I like the place and I like the home-made nature of it, and I think you can learn a lot from the experience. I would not reccommend taking the reins yourself until you've seen how the studio can be made to work.
And be sure to have Jim's sweet tea. There is none like it on earth.
