The Computone Lyricon is an analog synthesizer with a wind controller interface. The horn-controller responded to three input parameters: the keys (‘valves’) themselves, lip pressure, and wind force pressure. It sounds beautiful. Listening to this thing, I can’t help but think of the infamous Charles Napier ‘space hippies’ episode of Star Trek.
…and Quicksilver Messenger Service’ “Just For Love” LP.
Kinda makes me want to get a CV wind controller for my MS20…
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“Maestro will travel anywhere for new sounds.” Indeed. Maestro was the effects-device division of CMI in the 60s/70s. CMI was best known as the parent of Gibson Guitars in this era. When I was growing up (late 80s/early 90s), Maestro effects were considered fairly shite by professional musicians and we could still readily find these things for a few bucks at yard sales and pawn shops. M. has collected many of these units, so I’ve been able to use a lot of these things on recordings through the years. Missing from this family photo is the epic ‘Universal Synthesizer,’ which is not a synth at all, but rather a very early (the first?) multi-effect unit for guitar ETC. Synth or not, this device can make some fantastic synth-esque sounds with just about any input signal.
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The Ampli-Tek Phaser AT-10, circa 1973. An early Leslie rotating-speaker emulator with a charming cottage-industry aspect. This piece is truly lost to time. Anyone?
Electronic Music Laboratories, INC, was based in Vernon CT from 1968 through 1984. The company’s founders included Dale Blake, Norman Millard, Dennis Daugherty, Fred Locke, and Jeff Murray. Apparently EML synths used op-amps rather than transistors in certain circuits, which improved reliability relative to Moog and ARP designs of the period. Above, the EML 101. Below, the EML model 500. Anyone using one of these in their work? Drop a line and let us know…
“Does this qualify me for a prophet? Well, perhaps partially.”
Imagine if this dude had been your college music professor. Read a 4-page essay by Mongolian-born composer Vladamir Ussachevsky as printed in the 1/17/74 issue of DOWNBEAT magazine. Ussachevsky was one of the founders of the legendary Columbia-Princeton electronic music studio, and one of the folks who bridged the tape-manipulation and synthesizer eras of early electronic music. It’s almost impossible for us to grasp the conceptual leaps that these early pioneers had to make in order to arrive the formulation of audio-manipulation-as-music; for many of us working as musicians in the past few decades, it’s hard to even separate music and audio, so intertwined is audio technology with music, so thoroughly has the studio become-an-instrument.
The Shure Unisphere was the predecessor to the ubiquitous SM-58. It’s basically a dual-impedance SM-58 from what I can gather. Check out these 40-year old adverts for the Unisphere and consider that despite all we’ve experienced in audio-technology in the past four decades, we’re all still basically using the same vocal mic on stage. Pretty incredible…
They also made tube amplifiers, some of which actually sound pretty great, and distributed several synth instruments and drum machines which are believed to have been built by KORG in Japan. Their Compac-Piano (no resemblance to the sound of an actual piano) was apparently of Italian origin. Here’s a few period adverts for these oddballs. These were all sold in large numbers and are still fairly readily available for a reasonable price.
Fender Stratocaster and Quad Reverb as characterized by Detroit-musician caricature ‘Bumpwell Blues’; note Strat-as-phallus reference.
The mid 1970s is the most maligned period of Fender’s history. Musicians and collectors alike complain of such indignities as three-bolt necks on Stratocasters and Jazz/Telecaster basses, ‘high powered’ tube amplifiers which managed their impressive-on-paper ratings through the use of frequency-sucking suppressor caps, and of course the dreaded 70s heavy-guitar syndrome.
OK so how did Fender manage to sell so many of these instruments which we now regard as sub-par? Could it be possible that the goofiest ad campaign in guitar history might have had something to do with it? No disrespect intended to the illustrators/art-directors/copywriters who crafted these curiosities; I am sure that they were just doing what they were told, and the work is certainly of a consistent quality. But really? This was a good idea?
On a more serious note though: what does is mean exactly when a manufacturer creates an entire (expensive) ad campaign that does not show the actual products or even reference any concrete product specifications or claims? Is this good marketing? Hubris? How do we feel about the products? Does it make us more or less curious? Do we accept that these products are in fact ‘icons’ by virtue of the fact that we are shown only icons that represent the products rather than seeing the products themselves?
Fender PA100
Fender Quad Reverb
Fender Stratocaster
Fender Twin Reverb Amplifier (presumably; this ad does not even reference a particular product)
Along similar lines… ROGERS drums was the drum-division of Fender-Parent CBS musical instruments at the time. Here’s an example of the very similar ROGERS campaign of the same era. They chose a different illustrator (smart) and it seems like they used a different copywriter as well; we also see the actual product in a small window at the bottom, so there was probably a different marketing person responsible for this campaign. The overall effect is similar though. Also consider the implicit statement that only males play drums. Not surprising given the era; hell Dean Markley was still running sexist ads last week AFAIK.
Preservation Sound found photo #1: unknown rock band circa 1968. In this stage setup:Fender Precision bass; Blonde Bandmaster head with Black Tolex 2.x15 cabinet; Shure SM56 above the drum kit;unknown Teisco/Guyatone-type electric guitar; Additional unknown Fender amps; Burns Bison guitar; striped stovepipe trousers and turtleneck sweater; scarf.
Today on PS dot com: a tribute to a tribute. Have you seen The Hound Blog? The Hound Blog is written by one James Marshall, owner of the Lakeside Lounge bar in Manhattan. Marshall is also a music-writer and wow a real expert on early rocknroll. His Lakeside Lounge bar looms large in my memory; when i first moved to NYC in 1998, I played in a country-rock band that often played at the Lakeside. It was then (and probably still is) a very musician-friendly venue; small enough to fill with all your friends, decent amplifiers provided for your use, and a good atmosphere in general. Several years later I remember meeting author/music-journalist Nick Tosches at the LL one night; I am a big fan of Tosches’ writing and he made a much bigger impression on me than many of the more famous faces I’ve crossed paths with over the years. Thank you, JM, for running a great spot and running a great blog.
ANYways… a regular feature on the Hound Blog is their ‘Found Photo’ series (I think they are up to 66 at this point). The series seems to focus on snapshots of individuals in the 50s/60s whose sartorial style and general attitude exude a certain rocknroll style that we are used to seeing in Hollywood representation of early rockers/mods/general bad-dudes but rarely do we see in ‘real-life’ images. Today I offer the first two of what I hope to make a regular feature here as well: Preservation Sound found photos, selected based on… you guessed it… interesting old audio equipment.
Gibson SG; SUNN Spectre head and cabinet; Peavey practice amplifier perched on silverface Fender Deluxe (?); BOSS CE-2 Chorus pedal (on table next to ashtray).
This design project began with the goal of crafting an entire amplifier that echoed the form of a vacuum tube itself. See here for example of the intial execution. Thanks to cabinet-maker N.N. for the beautiful walnut frames.
The 22277 is a two-channel audio amplifier for home music-listening. Power output is approximately seven watts per channel. Each channel uses 1/2 of a 6SL7 twin triode and one 6L6. The rectifier used is a 6AX5.
Volume control is provided. Inputs are via twin RCA jacks and speaker outputs are via 1/4″ jacks. The relatively high gain of the 6SL7 tube allows the unit to be driven to full output from any line-level source (E.G., radio tuner, DVD player, iPod, etc).
What purpose can programmed sound serve in our environment? Communication of information. Entertainment. Marking boundaries of different spaces. All of this happens in the environment of an airport. We need to know if there has been a gate-change for our flight. We enjoy some sort of distraction or amusement while we wait. We expect one sort of sound in the airport bar, and another at the gate. OK. So… inform, entertain, delineate. But how about… changing the mental state of an unsuspecting listener by lulling them into an acceptance of their relative insignificance in the universe in order to help assuage their fears of possible imminent death?
Here’s how Brian Eno, composer of ‘Music for airports,’ widely considered to be the first ‘ambient music’ album, explains his project:
“… Whenever you go into an airport or an airplane, they always play this very happy music, which is sort of saying: ‘You’re not going to die, there’s not going to be an accident, don’t worry!’ And, I thought, that was really the wrong way around, I thought that it would be much better to have music that said: ‘Well, if you die, it doesn’t really matter.’ You know. So I wanted to create a different feeling, that you were sort of suspended in the Universe and your life or death wasn’t so important. …” (source)
Talk about turning the problem on-its-head. I should say at this point that I am an unabashed huge fan of Brian Eno; IMO, there is no one person in the history of recorded sound that has been as able to imagine and exercise new potentials for audio. Anyhow… if you feel that his statements in the interview above seem somewhat grandiose/flakey/pie-in-the-(or falling from the)-sky-ish, I offer this personal anecdote. I recently played the opening of ‘music for airports’ for my students in my Soundtrack class (‘The Soundtrack’ is a course I’ve been teaching at the University which gives visual arts and communications students an understanding of the creative potentials of audio in their work). We were discussing the programming of audio in public spaces – shops, restaurants, etc. I played 5:00 of “Music for Airports” and asked what they music made them think of. Several immediately responded, ‘death.’ OK, I replied… how do you feel about this death?’ “Okay” was the reply. Well done Eno.
It’s kind of hard to believe that there were so many airports in the US in the late 1960s that Altec published these 6pp and 8pp catalogs. While there are no claims in these publications that these Altec systems might be used to effectively assuage customers’ fear of death, they do offer the following:
“Lack of reliability (in an airport sound system) can cause not only inconvenience but actual danger and panic in some cases. This is why Altec Lansing, pioneer in integrated sound systems, has stressed aerospace-level reliability in every… component.”
Altec stresses here that lack of reliability, such as it might result in the mis-cue of important verbal flight information, can potentially cause danger and panic. Eno took this one step further by understanding that the music-programming of the environment can also have a dramatic effect on the mental state of the customers; and he systematically set out to design sound-pieces that maximize the potential of the sound-system to comfort those customers.
Products discussed include the Altec 650, 687, and 695 microphones; various compressors and power amps; and audio-signal distribution equipment. ‘Case studies’ which catalog various successful Altec airport sound-systems already in use are provided as well.
The Computone Lyricon is an analog synthesizer with a wind controller interface. The horn-controller responded to three input parameters: the keys (‘valves’) themselves, lip pressure, and wind force pressure. It sounds beautiful. Listening to this thing, I can’t help but think of the infamous Charles Napier ‘space hippies’ episode of Star Trek.
“Maestro will travel anywhere for new sounds.” Indeed. Maestro was the effects-device division of CMI in the 60s/70s. CMI was best known as the parent of Gibson Guitars in this era. When I was growing up (late 80s/early 90s), Maestro effects were considered fairly shite by professional musicians and we could still readily find these things for a few bucks at yard sales and pawn shops. M. has collected many of these units, so I’ve been able to use a lot of these things on recordings through the years. Missing from this family photo is the epic ‘Universal Synthesizer,’ which is not a synth at all, but rather a very early (the first?) multi-effect unit for guitar ETC. Synth or not, this device can make some fantastic synth-esque sounds with just about any input signal.
The Ampli-Tek Phaser AT-10, circa 1973. An early Leslie rotating-speaker emulator with a charming cottage-industry aspect. This piece is truly lost to time. Anyone?
