I do not trust you, microphone. Yet.
The next few weeks at Preservation Sound: we bring you: in no particular order: some of the state-of-the-art in studio recording equipment of the early 1960s. A period that I like to refer to as the ‘pre-rock-era.’ As-in, Rock And Roll existed, but Rock? That was at least one Ed Sullivan show/protest song/freedom march/long haircut/draft card/Godard film away. Also of note: the period 1960-1963 was also the end-of-the-line of the first Golden Age of vacuum tube audio development. Although new valves and valve-operated products were still being introduced, it was only a short while before Solid State became the defacto state-of-the-art.
Enjoy the material, and as always… if any of y’all are using this kit in the studio these days, drop us a line and let us know…
2 replies on “This month at PS Dot Com: Pro Audio Equipment of the early 1960s”
That’s the JFK/MM era….”rock and roll” was kiddie music, grownups listened to big band, jazz, or classical. Folk had serious, and not respectable, political implications. Country did exist but was limited to a defined audience. It was a different time.
The new “valves” no one uses any more, none of them are in regular new production that I know of. The EL34 and KT88 represent the last power tubes designed anyone uses today, at least in any quantity.
The “horse’s mouth” document is the RCA High Fidelity Circuits brochure, with great two color line art, maybe an inspiration for the “J.R. Bob Dobbs” craze of the 80s. All the latest RCA tubes specifically made for High Fidelity are in there, with circuits. Including mic pre’s and a small mixer.
Sadly I gave my copy away years back….I’d be super grateful for GOOD scans of one today.
The end of vacuum tube development occurred in the mid to late 60s, as large corporate operations fought to retain viability. Many late developments never went to production and some prototypes do exist of things that were proposed or scheduled for production when management finally pulled the plug. Most of the tube manufacturers were also solid state manufacturers as well, GE, RCA and Sylvania of course, and WE. The Lee’s Summit plant was for a twenty year period the only facility on the planet that simultaneously made vacuum tubes, discrete semiconductors and ICs under the same roof. Management later admitted, after the last 300B rolled off the Sealex machine, that they’d still be making them except for the incessant demand of the Japanese, which might cause the line to become a cash cow they’d never be able to kill.
There was still a lot of growth room in the existing tube machinery and standards for more growth in all the directions tubes were still growing. But solid state offered possibilities tubes never could-especially in terms of making consumer equipment more profitable. Transistors could be made with less, and less-skilled labor, cheaper, and they could be made to work in cheaper circuits. Plus which, transistor equipment was tougher to fix, leading people to throw it out and buy new.
To be fair, correctly designed transistor equipment WAS better in many ways, and could do things tubes would have never feasibly been able to do. But correctly designed is a funny thing. It means build cost, and that’s anathema. A table radio equalling the performance of a good All American 5 tube radio takes at least fifteen transistors and half a dozen diodes-but table radios weren’t important. Portable radios and cassette players were, and 8 track players. And consumer equipment was the increasingly less important end of the electronics business-industrial, military, avionics and the increasing computer business were responsible for most of the profits. Computers needed only cathode ray tubes for display, and that was mostly a commodity business.
Anyway, here’s the brochure you want:
http://www.tubebooks.org/file_downloads/RCA_HiFi.pdf