Category: History

Categories
History Publications

starting at the beginning

Decided to build a recording studio.  It won’t cost me a ton of bread.

I heard that it’s important to have a private, personal space to ‘work out ideas’ etc.

I’ve been reading up on where to stick the microphones.  So many loud noises.

This shit is hella confusing tho.  Might have to go to special recording school/camp.

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“Modern Recording Magazine” was published from at least 1975 through 1981.  This is all I can confirm from both the internet, and from my own digging through physical copies of the magazine.  Based on the content of the advertising and editorial, the publication seems clearly aimed at the new species of ‘home-recordists’ birthed by the advent of the TEAC/TASCAM multi-track recording equipment (see scan at head of this article).  There is a lot of discussion of tape stock, graphic EQs, where to stick the mics, what goes down in a ‘pro session,’ etc.  Unlike “Recording Engineer/Producer,” another publication of the era, this magazine was not aimed at working professional sound engineers.   There is plenty of interesting content, though.  For instance, well-known music writers Nat Hentoff and Craig Anderton contributed some pieces.

The Jan’76 issue which I read today featured “Part II” of “The History of Magnetic Recording” by a Robert Angus.   This article revealed that the earliest magnetic audio recorders were demonstrated in the year 1900 and marketed and sold in the United States as early as 1908.    Goddamn that is a long time ago.  A young Danish engineer named Poulsen patented the idea in the US around that time.  For all the details about Poulsen and his predecessors, visit this page.

The earliest champion of magnetic recording in the United States was Charles D Rood, pictured above on the eve of his 92nd birthday.  Rood was the archetype of the 19th century plutocrat:  he made his career as an oil salesman, made his millions popularizing the Hamilton watch, and then lost it all trying to manufacture recording equipment.  He was a character of mixed-reputation; here the NYT lampoons him in an article from 1911:

Poulsen/Rood’s Telegraphone was the earliest mass-marketed Wire Recorder, a recording device which works pretty much the same way as a tape recorder, but with a piece of magnetic wire in place of metal-coated tape.

(web source)

These machines were not intended to record music.  Given that (as the NYT article tells us) Rood hated smoking, drinking, cussing, and cavorting, I think we can fairly assume that he was not too much into music.  What Rood was into, clearly, was business: and the Telegraphone was created and sold as a business dictation machine, designed to be used with a telephone as the input device.

According to Angus’ article in “Modern Recording,” Rood seems to have turned down or ignored every possibility to promote, exploit, and grow the technology that he was manufacturing; instead, he seems to have devoted his energies towards stock manipulation, lawsuits with AT&T, and selling equipment to the German Navy (in the 1930s….).  Rood even ignored Lee De Forest’s experiments using the Telegraphone for use in sync with Motion Pictures.  In 1912.    This is a full 15 years before “The Jazz Singer” debuted.    BTW, if you are not familiar with Lee De Forest:  He invented the vacuum tube.

If anyone has ever used a Telegraphone, drop a line and tell us about it.

Categories
Guitar Equipment History Technical

Fkkng magnets. How do they work?

I had often heard of primitive ‘field-coil’ speakers, but it was not until i was confronted with a pair of them that I actually had to come to grips with this ancient technology.

Consider how a basic modern speaker driver works.  See this excellent animation for a quick example.

There is a (usually) paper cone with some wire wrapped around a center post.  The wire coil sits roughly inside a ring of magnetic material (either ceramic or metallic).

An electrical-signal is sent into the wire coil, and this causes it move relative to the fixed magnet.

OK so we all know what a paper cone is.  And we all know what a coil of wire is.  But what about this magnet?  Where did it come from?

Well, it turns out that modern speakers use what are called ‘permanent magnets.’  As-in, the magnet has a permanent charge.  The material which composes the magnet is always magnetic, regardless of any other influence.  Hold a key up to the back of any raw speaker driver and you will see that yes this is in fact a magnet.  And a pretty powerful one.

Permament magnets possesing enough magnetic power to function in a speaker driver are not naturally occurring materials, though.  They had to be invented.  And they were, largely as part of American WW2 engineering efforts.  These new, powerful permanent magnets were engineerd from an alloy of aluminum, nickel, and cobalt, hence their name:  Alnico magnets.  In the 1950s, newer ‘ceramic’ permanent magnets were engineered, and these became the norm owing to their even greater efficiency and lower cost (cobalt is expensive as a raw material).

But what about all the speakers and guitar amps designed BEFORE the invention of this wonderful Alnico substance?  These devices (and it’s rare to find one that is still in good working condition) use similar looking speakers, but with a very different type of magnet.  They use Electromagnets.  Meaning:  they use magnets which are made of a material which only become magnetic when a large DC current is passing through it.

Exactly where the audio device creates this large DC current, and exactly what effect this arrangement has on the total system, are interesting issues to explore.  This piece is a still a work-in progress.

I hope to have it completed soon, and I will post some audio examples of this antique technology at work.

Categories
History Publications Technical

Service Call

Why do some of us (audio enthusiasts, recording engineers, musicians) choose to use old vacuum tube equipment?  The reasons vary widely, but very few users would cite ‘better reliability’ as a positive factor.   True, much old tube-based audio equipment designed for professional use (EG., Fender guitar amps) is designed so that it CAN be easily serviced.  I haven’t found a tube guitar amp yet that I couldn’t fix. But ‘serviceability’ is different from ‘reliability.’

Is vacuum tube audio equipment inherently less reliable than solid-state equipment?  I am not certain that this is the case.  But there are a few basic conditions of tube equipment that would seem to make it more prone to breakdown.

*High Voltage.  Due to the optimum operating points of many vacuum tubes, most tube equipment will have DC voltages upwards of 300 or even 500 volts present inside the chassis, flowing through the capacitors, resistors, pots, and transformers.  This voltage is often near the stated working limit of these components.  Compare this to solid-state, where 24volts is the most you will likely find.

*Filaments (tube heaters).  Man look at those tubes glow.  They look great, right?  Yes they do.  But remember that the glow is created by heaters.  Their function is to make the tube hot.  Very very hot.  And they make everything else in the area hot.  Drying out wires and insulation, causing potting wax to flow out, and generally contributing to the decline of the physical condition of all the components.  Consider the amount of heat in, say, a Fender Twin amp.  Each 6L6 tube is drawing (6.3Vx .9A)= 6 watts x 4 tubes.  That’s 24 watts of pure HEAT present whenever the device is turned on.  Solid-state equipment does not need heaters to operate.

*Layout. In order to conserve space in a chassis, and simplify the construction, tube equipment was often wired point-to-point, with lots of little hand-made solder joints.  Compare this to solid-state equipment, where the smaller (due to lower voltage requirements) components can all be assembled on a board.  Just take a look at the two devices here.  Which one do you think is more likely to develop a problem due to mechanical shock?

(web source)

(web source)

Anyhow, vacuum tube equipment tended to require more servicing than later solid-state equipment designed for the same purpose.  A natural consequence of this was…  more servicemen!  Radio/Television repair shops used to be a common sight in America.  Now, not so much.  Even beyond the greater need for servicing in the tube-era, there is secondary reason: cost.  Since so much modern ‘surface-mount’ equipment can be built by robotic automation, and produced offshore, modern equipment costs less.  It’s often just not worth repairing.  You simply throw it out.  This was not the case in the 1950s.

Consider the cost of a basic 17″ television in 1951.  $139.50.  This is today’s equivalent of $1170.  That’s a lot of money. If your $1170 TV breaks, you would likely get it fixed.   Whereas in 2010, a 17″ TV will only cost you $168. Would you spend time and money to have a $168 TV serviced?  Not likely.

A large range of publications once existed to cater to these legions of TV/Radio serviceman.  We will look at several of these titles in the future on this site.  For today, let’s consider Radio & Television News, which was the 1948-1959 title of the magazine that Ziff-Davis published for the professional readership market.   Wiki has a good article about the long and complex history of this publication.  Anyhow, the R&TN ran articles on electronic theory, service practice, general small-business professionalism, etc.  They also had several articles in each issue which offered circuit descriptions and schematics for various devices.   R&TN published several ‘Audio Feature’ issues that have some interesting projects outlined.  Today we will look at some of these projects which have potential use in the recording studio.

FOLLOW THE LINK FOR MANY INTERESTING C.1950 DIY AUDIO PROJECTS.,..

Continue reading “Service Call”

Categories
History Synthesizers

Prepare The Piano! With a synthesizer?

‘Prepared Piano’ is a time-honored technique of altering a Piano’s sound “by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers.” Wiki tells us that John Cage is the most noted proponent of this form, and the great Erik Satie was an earlier practitioner.  Sounds like good company to be in.

But why stop with the strings, hammers and dampers?  Why not put something on the keys?

Dubreq was a British instrument manufacturer in the 60s/70s.  Dubreq is most famous for its Stylofone, the little toy synthesizer instrument that had its star-moment in the bridge of Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” It’s called the Stylofone because you play the ‘keys’ with a stylus (pen) rather than by direct contact.   You can still buy a Stylofone.  I have one, and it’s the best musical instrument you can buy for $14.99.  Potentially useful for certain types of tracks.

So once Dubreq conquered the world with a keyboard-that-you-play-with-a-pen, they dropped this bomb.  The Piano-mate.  I picked up this lil weirdo at the Flea market the other day for a few bucks.  I had thought i was buying some obscure guitar amp.  I was so, so wrong.

Seems like there was a real obsession with the physicality of the keyboard over at Dubreq HQ.  Really a very uncanny obsession.

What is the Piano-mate?  Basically, it’s a Synth/Organ which does not have a keyboard of its own.  Instead, it has these 2 bars that you place ON ANOTHER FULL-SIZE KEYBOARD (let’s call it ‘The Host”). The bars have little plunger microswitches that rest on the Host-keyboard.

When you press a key on the Host, the Piano-mate responds with its own little squawk.    The Piano-mate gives the user 3 different sounds (roughly, organ, elec piano, and ‘synth’), and it also has its own vibrato section.  Oh and did i mention that it also has its own amp and speaker built in?  And and that the whole thing nests together into little recesses in its backside?  Really very odd.

The piano mate is interesting to me because it was not intended to be its ‘own sound.’  As the manual tells us,  Dubreq’s concept was for the Piano-mate to augment the acoustic tone of an acoustic piano.  So we are supposed to hear both sounds, acoustic and electronic, together as one experience.  It’s a very strange hybrid.

OK so how does it sound?  I find it a lot of fun to play.  In my assessment, it turns any simple little piano-tune into instant Roxy-Music/ 70s Eno ballad-majesty.   I recorded these 2 examples with my little Tascam DR08 dictaphone, aka the Digital Camera of Sound.

—————————————————————                           What you are about to hear is a single sonic event –  no layering or multitracking.  Give ’em a listen.

PianoMate_sound3

PianoMate_Sound2

This Is The Piano Mate Experience.

Categories
History Microphones

Microphone (hand) signals

Picked up this pair of circa 1951 Electro-voice 655A mics for $25 at the flea market yesterday.  These were the top-of-the line in 1951, retailing for today’s equivalent of $982 each.  Wow.  that’s a lot of money.

They had no cabling.  Just some bare wire.  They also came with this great little RCA MI 91-B mic stand.

Anyhow, a quick check with an ohmmeter gave an encouraging result, so i wired them up. And they sound great!  Not at all like what you would expect from 60-year-old mics that are beat to hell.  Very articulate, good level, pretty high-fi.  I own a ton of mics from the 50s and there are not too many American-made dynamic mics that I would actually want to use in a session.  These have real potential.

Anyhow, how about that circa 1951 price though?  I don’t think anyone was using these at home with their wire recorder.  Audio used to be serious business.

E. picked up this book at a library de-accession sale some years ago.  It was published by Hastings House in 1956, and it seems to have been used an a University of Vermont communications class.

———————————————————————- –  Microphone technique and ‘identification’ is a big part of the instruction on offer here.  Most of it is pretty unsurprising, but i found the extreme rigor of ‘Microphone hand signals’ to be really interesting.  I have worked in broadcast production and recording studios for years and I don’t think I have ever been aware of a truly codified system of ‘hand signals’ for producers to use in the studio.  Anyhow, here’s a quick lesson from the past.  Also -check the ‘turntable hand signals’ at the end.  These all need to end up in a hip hop video.  “Open my mic!”

Follow the link for many more awkward-looking gestures.

Continue reading “Microphone (hand) signals”
Categories
Custom Fabrication History RCA Technical Western Electric

TECH: antique theater equipment

It’s a sign of real accomplishment for an artist to have a monograph of their work published.  I would imagine that a few hundred are published worldwide by recognized publishing companies each year.  But much more rare is the collector’s monograph.  That’s right.  You have amassed a collection of (x) that is so stupendous that “let’s make a book about it!”  And the book costs like $60.

Of all the cults and sub-cults of audio-equipment collecting, few are more rarefied and costly than collecting antique movie-theatre equipment; especially equipment made by the Western Electric Company (hf. WE).  I won’t go into WE; the company had such a complicated history filled with intense government regulation, so tightly intertwined were they with the communication industries in American life; check out wikipedia for the details.  Suffice to say that, along with RCA, WE was a main manufacturer of the equipment used to playback sound in movie theatres at the dawn of the sound-film era (late 1920s).   Since the equipment was designed for such purpose, quality and reliability was very high.    Also massive.

(from “Recording Sound For Motion Pictures,” McGraw-Hill, 1931)

Here’s RCA’s theater system from that era:

(from ‘Audels New Electric Library,’ Audel+ Co, 1931-1958)

Mr. Yashima had quite a collection of this stuff.

(scanned from “Makoto Yashima Collection,” Seibundo, Japan)

It’s hard for me to say what the value of these WE components is, but i can easily imagine single pieces trading in the 5 figures.

Getting back down to earth, WE stopped making theatre-sound equipment in the late 1940s due to anti-trust regulations (complicated, right?), but RCA kept on building it.

This brings us into the realm of more accessible (even downright cheap!) devices.  Even though this later hardware may be inexpensive nowadays, we are still dealing with equipment that is designed for ultimate reliability, and really very good fidelity.  After all, tens of thousands of people sat in these theaters every year, paying a good fee in order to watch and listen to the latest films…  this is a case where quality really matters.

I  picked up this circa 1960 RCA 9362 booster amp for…  maybe… $70?  on eBay a while back.  I had no idea what it was, but it looked like it might be useful in the studio.  And here is where it gets technical….

Continue reading “TECH: antique theater equipment”
Categories
History Icons Manufacturers Publications

Saul Marantz and The Roots of Great Design

A few years ago I bought a pile of old electronic parts from an anonymous junk dealer.  Random stuff- 5 lbs of crappy ¼” jacks,  some VU meters, a box of giant knobs, etc.  The dealer also had a box of old AES Journals.

The AES, or Audio Engineering Society, is just what the name suggests.  A professional organization for those who work in audio.   I don’t know what the main focus of the AES is nowadays (i am not a member), but in the early 1960s it was very technical.  Not so much an organization for people who engineer audio (IE., use equipment to manipulate audio signals), but rather an organization for people who engineer the equipment that recording engineers would then use to manipulate audio.  Let’s put it this way:  there’s a lot of math involved.  Here’s a contents page from 1964.  This issue was devoted to tape-recorder noise reduction. As in, designing the circuits.  Not just building or using them.

There are some more accessible articles, like this piece detailing a custom-made audio console:

…and, of course, all those great old advertisements.

Anyhow, when i had the chance to examine the circa-1970 AES journals that the dealer sold me, it became apparent that they had once been the property of one Saul Marantz.

I knew the name Marantz as it applies to audio equipment – my wife in fact has a complete (circa 1995) Marantz hi-fi system in her studio – but i knew a little about the man.   Turns out he was a fascinating character.

From the NYtimes: “ A man of many parts — photographer, classical guitarist, graphics designer, collector of Chinese and Japanese art — Mr. Marantz was fascinated by electronics from his boyhood days in Brooklyn. His passion for music led to his first attempts at building audio components…. After service in the Army during World War II, Mr. Marantz and his wife, Jean Dickey Marantz, settled in Kew Gardens, Queens. One day in 1945, he decided to rip the radio out of his 1940 Mercury, where he rarely listened to it, and put it to more practical use in his house. But that transplant required building additional electronics to make the radio work indoors. Such was the hook that snared Mr. Marantz for life.”

Saul Marantz was a  career graphic designer at the time.  He left this career once his Hi -Fi components (co-designed with engineer Sidney Smith) took off.

Learning that S. Marantz had been a graphic designer (and collector of Japanese art) really put the puzzle together for me.  The extremely elegant appearance of all the Marantz products (until he left the company in 1968, at least) always made a big impression on me.  Early Marantz hardware was high-end, sure – with prices and specs close to McIntosh pieces – but their visual design is in a league buy itself.

(web source)

(web source)

In another of the Marantz AES journals, S. Marantz receives an achievement award for outstanding contribution to consumer audio equipment.

The ‘classic’ Marantz designs were introduced between 1950 and 1964.  After that point, it became a ‘name-only’ company.  The more recent Marantz-branded products are of good quality, for what’s it worth.

How important are visuals to your appreciation of audio hardware?  How important the tactile interface with the devices?

When everything is reduced (enhanced??) to a touch screen, with the visual experience of audio tools be heightened, or reduced?

Categories
History Technical

The Limits of Control

How much control over their audio do music-listeners want and need? At the very least, we can agree that they need to be able to turn the sound on and off.  Control over volume (level) is probably the next most important thing.  But beyond that… what is really necessary, what is really desired, and what is just marketing?

I came across this RCA  vacuum-tube reverberation system this past weekend at the flea market.  It was new, in the box, never removed from its packaging.  Likely an ill-advised Christmas gift from the Eisenhower era.   It cost me one dollar.

This device was sold as an add-on to certain RCA stereo hi-fi consoles of the late 1950s.  Owners of these certain consoles could purchase the unit, open up their console, install a few metal boxes, plug in some cable harnesses… and voila.

The listener would then be able to selectively add reverb (ie., artificial echo) to whatever audio they were listening to.  Overall, the whole operation is about as difficult as installing your own car stereo.

This concept seems patently absurd to me, and i love reverb.  I love reverb on my guitar amp, i love the reverb chambers and plug-ins that I use in the studio…  but the idea of adding reverb to a recording which has already been mixed a certain way…  it simply would never cross my mind.

Getting back to my earlier line:  beyond on/off and level, what do we really want/need as audio listeners?  Someone decided a very long time ago that Bass and Treble control was pretty much a necessity, and there knobs (or sub-menus, as the case may be) have graced pretty much every audio amplifier since.

These controls were originally marketed as a solution for ‘poor room acoustics.’  Really?  It seems a little fishy to me.  If I go into a room that is bright-sounding, do I attempt to speak in a bassier-voice?   Used properly, there is no harm i suppose.  OK so Bass and Treble (note the convenient binary; also the reference to the musical staffs) seem alright.

So once we’ve given listeners control over the relative amounts of low-and-high frequencies, the next thing that manufacturers introduced were these reverberation units.  And they made them for everything.  Hell, they even made them for CARS.

(web source)

So weird.  Here’s a few 1970’s Japanese-made units.  This was clearly not a short-lived craze.

(web sources)

So we’ve given listeners the ability to control frequency response.  We’ve given them the ability to manipulate the apparent size of the space in which the recording took place.  What’s next?  In the 1970s, the DBX corporation sold hundreds of thousands of units just like this.

(web source)

A dynamic-range controller for home audio listening.  Now consumers could elect to give their recordings more dynamic range (IE more volume difference between loud peaks and quiet passages).  The stated intent of this was to make up for all the dynamic range that is ‘lost’ in the recording process.  Really?  I am pretty sure that whoever recorded that album was conscious of the dynamics that were present.  Why mess with it?  Anyhow, certain of these DBX units could also compress the source material.  IE., give the audio LESS dynamic range.

Equalization control and artificial reverb augmentation still exist in most home audio amps today.

They have renamed the reverb control as ‘sound space’ or something like that, but it’s the same idea.  ‘Take an audio signal and put it in a different space.’  The do-it-yourself dynamics processors seem to have been largely phased out though.  I don’t consider myself an audio purist, but there is something about all of these devices that really seems nonsensical to me.  Overall i get the feeling that  designers  ran out of knobs to put on the boxes, so they had to make new boxes and populate them with more knobs.

There’s one more angle that i’d like to consider:  So over the years, consumers have been given the 3 main types of audio processing that recording engineers have used in the studio for 60 or more years:  those 3 categories are *frequency balance, *ambience, and *dynamics.  In the past 20 years, though, recording engineers have been given tremendous new control capability due to Digital Audio Workstations, e.g., Protools.  What could this mean for consumer hardware?  Will audio waveform editing, time compression/expansion, and automation control soon be available in consumer audio hardware?  Is it already?

Does anyone actively engage with the ‘sound-space’ controls on their Hi-Fi receiver?  Are they useful?

Categories
Altec History

The Incredible Past Lives of Our Favorite Tools

A client recently asked me to service an antique piece of audio equipment: an Altec 438A.   This device belongs to the category of audio equipment called ‘compressors.’  Compressors are devices that even-out the variation in level (IE quiet vs loud) in an audio signal.  The applications of compressors are great and varied, and the use of compressors in music recording/mixing work is really an art.  Antique or ‘vintage’ compressors are some of the most fetishized devices in the pro-audio world.

Anyhow, my client wanted his Altec 438A modified so that it would be more useful for modern rock music recording techniques.  I won’t go into the details, but i performed the operation and he was very pleased with the results.  The Altec 438 (and its close cousin the 436) is just not practical for use in modern recording situations primarily because it was not really intended for use in a recording studio.  It was intended for use in industrial paging systems (e.g., “cleanup in aisle 9.  Cleanup in aisle 9…”) and civil defense warning systems, among other things.  That’s right.  The compressor that was used to get your ‘sikk’ drum sound might have been part of cold-war era military preparedness.  And the story of how these Altecs ended up in the racks of so many high-end modern recording studios (and, therefore, on so many modern records) is just as odd and specific.

Don’t get me wrong- Altec did make plenty  of equipment designed for recording studios in the 50s and 60s, and I am sure that 438s were used in some studios back then.

But there weren’t all that many studios around in those days.  Certainly not enough to create the 1000s of old Altec comps that fill studios nowadays.

Altec specified the 436 Compressor as part of several of their industrial and civil audio systems, the most evocative of which is Project Giant Voice.  Giant Voice dates to circa 1960.

Giant Voice is just that- a giant PA system designed to carry the voice of the Mayor or Nation Guardsman all over town. Literally All-Over-Town.

Nothing like a little mass instruction to keep the kids duck-n-coverin’.

Crockett Texas apparently held a meeting of the Town Elders in the fall of 1961 which led to their purchase of an Altec ‘Giant Voice’ system.

Considering that these Town Elders had just lived through the Bay Of Pigs invasion and the start of the Berlin wall, you can’t really fault them.

I wonder where Crockett’s two Altec compressors ended up?

One thing is for sure – Crockett’s compressors were not in England in the early 1960s.  But a few of their brethren were.  It turns out that EMI Records technical staff went to the United States in the late 50s and purchased a few Altec 436/438s.  The staff heavily modified these units (as I recently modified my client’s 438) in order to create something that they called the RS124.

(image scanned from “Recording The Beatles,” Kehew & Ryan).

EMI was the Beatles record label at the time, and guess what… it is the sound of these modified Altec compressors that helped to shape some of the most successful and influential rock music recordings of all time.

Authors Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew published a book in 2006 called ‘Recording the Beatles.’  ‘Book’ is perhaps a bit of an understatement.  This thing is a Tome.  It is awesome.

I highly recommend it to anyone who is at all interested in record production or the Beatles.  Anyhow, this book, and the hype surrounding this book on the forums, helped to really inform everyone-who-cares that these old Altecs can have great application in the modern recording studio.  Prices on these used units have drastically shot up, from around $250 in 2005 to as much as $1500 at high-end dealers today.

So: what began life as a humble product created for use in industrial plants and civil defense was secretly hijacked by the British, transformed, and then re-sold back to us decades later as a cult item and now used as a fine craftsman’s tool.

Are there any industrial audio devices from the 1990s/2000s that have begun to migrate into the studio?

Has anyone ever purchased a defunct Giant Voice system at auction?

Categories
History Icons RCA

ICONS: rca and evaporating knowledge

The story of RCA is a great American industrial story.  From its origins in WW1 to decades to breakups and re-configurations due to government regulation and shifts in consumer patterns, the Radio Corporation Of America was a consistent presence in the manufacture of media-playback devices as well as media itself.  It’s an incredible story.  Check out the Wikipedia entry if you want the details.

For someone growing up in my generation (born 1976), thought, RCA electronics did not have really good associations.  My impression of RCA was basically…  the company that made that crappy electronics stuff that was not as good as SONY (or even panasonic).  Well, by the time i was aware of the RCA brand, the company was only moments away from being broken up and sold off for good.   But just a few decades earlier, wow what a force RCA was.  the 33rpm record, vacuum tubes, mainframe computers, color television…  we owe an incredible debt to the engineers that worked at RCA in the 20th century.  Now that i have access to the pro-audio equipment that RCA was making decades before my birth, I am a big fan.  it’s great stuff.  an RCA BA-2 mic preamp is a great simple design that always gets good results in the studio.  And their ribbon mics?  Amazing.

RCA published an glossy magazine for its engineers.  it’s pretty technical, but i can understand the Audio-related articles.

It’s interesting to read essays that attempt to quantify the acoustic performance of those god-awful ‘french provincal’ Hi-Fi consoles.

I do not know how many people worked at RCA in the 50s/60s, but i imagine it was in the mid 6-figures.  Ironically, even i have been an ‘RCA’ employee – I worked for a few years at SONYMUSIC, of which ‘RCA’ is one of the record labels within this major label.  Of course, by the time i got there, the RCA name (as it pertains to sound-recordings) had been sold and re-sold and licensed so many times that the connection is faint at best.

I live in a town that was once a manufacturing powerhouse, with several major pro-audio companies present.  I will soon publish a post about Bridgeport’s audio manufacturing history.  I have sometimes thought about looking up former SCULLY employees, for instance, and trying to interview them about their work.

Once these people are gone, there will be no one left to ‘fill in the blanks’ about a great many details of audio technology history.

For instance: I was recently corresponding with a gentleman who is an expert on mid-20th century broadcast audio equipment. I was hoping he could clarify a vague detail in the schematic of a very old and very desirable microphone preamp.  Because: if i had a little more info, i could easily ‘clone’ this device and use it in my studio.  Since the vintage examples of this device sell for up to $7000, i have a pretty good incentive to build it myself.  Anyway, this very knowledgeable gentleman himself was stumped by this component as well, as are all folks on the forums.  So who does have the necessary knowledge?  if a HUGE community of thousands of audio and broadcast engineers all over the WWW can’t figure this out…  shit.  It’s the loss of this kind of information that i fear, and this is one of my motivations in creating this site.

Engineers who worked at RCA, and similar companies, back when our prized ‘vintage’ audio hardware was being manufactured, are the only people who can answer certain questions, provide certain skills.  ENAK is the trade name of Clarence Kane, a former RCA employee who now restores ribbon mics.  He is a very nice guy and he does great work, and very quickly.  He has restored an RCA BK5 and a SHURE 300 for me, and he really did a nice job. Dudes like this are a BLESSING.

I am not really sure what i am getting at here…  i am not saying that we should start cold-calling these dudes and finding out if they have piles of old schems and old parts in their homes…  but… after 15 years of going to estate sales all time, i can tell you that they probably do.  The ‘stuff’ of these retired engineers will all eventually turn up, but their knowledge and skills will not.