Around the time that ALTEC introduced their 947X series of solid-state plug-in amplifiers, ALTEC staff engineers Arthur Davis and Don Davis published the following paper in AUDIO magazine (see my previous post on AUDIO mag). ALTEC then reproduced and re-printed the paper as promotional material. I have scanned and uploaded the fill 12-page document.
Covered in this document: the 9200 modular console, the 9704A transmission measurement set, and the various ALTEC passive equalizer units of the period: graphic, shelving, and pass filters.
Check out the publication. It is a good quick primer on early impedance-matched mixing systems. In the future, I will post more extensive documentation on these ALTEC consoles and filters.
Some of the images in this 32-page ‘album’ have been reproduced often; for instance, the highly-dubious Dylan-with-Jazz Bass. Many, though, have never been seen by those who do not possess the actual document. This is a fairly rare item these days, as it was created with the intention of being cut-up and pinned to one’s wall. There are actually cut-lines printed in the margin of each page. So dig in….
Artists include: Union Gap, Mike Bloomfield and the Electric Flag, Brenda Lee and the Casuals, The Fifth Dimension, Sebastiao Neto with Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, Oscar Mesa and Mike Saluzzi with Roger Williams, The Merry-Go-Round, Vic Gaskin with Cannonball Adderley, Oscar Brown Jr., Herman’s Hermits, Chad and Jeremy, Bob Dylan, Wayne Newton, Sonny and Cher, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Lee Michaels, Noel Harrison, Edgar Willis and Barry Rillera with Ray Charles, Ian and Sylvia, The James Cotton Blues Band, Duke Ellington and Mercer Ellington, The Beach Boys, Don Ellis (check the prototype echo ((?)) unit), The Baja Marimba Band, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The First Edition (feat. Kenny Rogers on a Coronado Bass II), Rick Nelson and James Nelson, The Chambers Brothers, The Byrds, and a dude who apparently played a Stratocaster guitar named Jimi Hendrix.
Models covered in this publication: Model 150, 120, 100, 80, and 60 Classical guitars. Model FG-110, FG-150, FG-180, FG-230 steel-string acoustic guitars. Model SA-50, SA-30, SA-70, SA-20, and AE-11 electric hollowbody guitars; and the TA-60 and TA-30 guitar amplifiers.
I have owned and used several of these instruments. The electrics are really very cool, but keep in mind that most examples will need a neck reset and/or plane in order to play like a new guitar. Dig that dark green finish on the bass though. Killer.
It has often been noted that Jimmy Page toured with Yamaha acoustics in the early 70’s, which may be why Japanese Made ‘red-label’ Yamaha acoustics are currently in-demand.
Yamaha has used the term ‘natural sound’ for many decades to market a wide range of different audio gimmicks. The only constant seems to be that ‘natural sound’ represents Yamaha’s willingness to try odd new things in a constant technological struggle to achieve more accurate sound-reproduction. This early iteration of ‘natural sound’ seems to consist of these odd trapezoidal ‘happy-meal’ foam speakers. We had one of these amps in our band back in the 90’s and it was heavy as a bastard and very dull-sounding.
The PA, or Public-Address System, was still relatively new technology in 1940.
It’s hard for us to imagine any of the above scenarios without some sort of microphone/amplifier/speaker apparatus in play. The human voice was not designed to clearly address dozens or hundreds of people who may or may not be paying attention. Sure, we can yell pretty well; but the careful inflections of speech require an intimacy that cannot be accomplished on a mass scale. Without some ‘reinforcement.’ Enter the Vacuum Tube.
I have owned quite a few of these antique units. A few notable units have been restored; many more were gutted for parts, their chassis delivered to other uses. One tip: beware the input transformers on these early PA units. they are rarely magnetically shielded. The physical orientation of the input transformer unit relative to the power transformer is crucial. You can determine optimum positioning by placing your power transformer in the intended position. Send 120V AC to the primary of the power transformer. Then connect a low-impedance headphone (EG., a SONY 7506) to the primary or the secondary of the input transformer (try both). Now move the input transformer around relative to the power transformer. If the transformer is unshielded, you will clearly hear an optimum (less hum audible) position. This trick also works great for determining optimum output transformer position for hi-fi amps and guitar amps btw.
Polyfusion is an electronics firm in the Buffalo, NY area which began in the mid-1970s. According to their very outdated website, their sole standard product these days is a frequency-shifting device intended as a feedback-reducer in (presumably voice-only) PA systems. I do not know anything about these devices beyond what I have seen online, but I did recently come across a large folio of promo materials from the 1970s. It seems that Polyfusion got their start making modular synths which were used by such folks as“Vince Clarke, Ken Hemsley, Scott Humphrey, Masterworks, Steve Porcaro and Tangerine Dream.”
Anyhow. Here is the 1977 Polyfusion catalog and pricelist. Enjoy. If anyone is interested: I also have another 24 pages of detailed specs on each one of the modules, so drop me a line if you want to see those too.
A lot of interesting pieces here. I personally love the BK5.
The BK5 is an unusually bright and aggresssive ribbon mic. Highly recommended for… pretty much any spot-mic task. Hands-down better than the Royer R121. And about 1/2 the price. Not so reliable tho… mine has broken twice in as many years. but good god what a sound. and the pattern is super-tight.
Jim Marshall was a drum-shop keeper in London in the mid-60’s who began cloning the 1959 Fender Bassman amplifier in order to give British Musicians the popular American-Amplifer sound they wanted at a lower price made possible by domestic UK manufacture.
By around 1968 he had arrived at the classic Marshall formula of a simple Fender-derived circuit using 4x EL34 output tubes, Drake transformers, and a head unit sitting atop 2 large sealed cabinets each holding four 12-inch speakers. It is the use of the EL34 tubes (rather than Fender’s 6L6s) , with their greater power and gain, along with the ‘tight’ bass response afforded by the large speakers in the sealed boxes, that are most responsible for the ‘Marshall’ sound.
It is said that Pete Townsend was the impetus for the large human-height ‘stack’ aspect of the amplifier. The form of these things certainly suggests the huge volumes of sound/noise that they can produce. A great many bands used the ‘Marshall Stack’ in the 1970’s.
Nowadays, the ‘Marshall Stack’ is generally only used by true hard-rock and Metal bands, as well as the occasional ironic user. Well, maybe ironic. Who knows.
Today we will look at some early 70’s Marshall promotional material from the PS pile/archive.
Click on the link to download the entire 20-page 1971 full-line catalog: Marshall_1971_cat
Some circa 1970 Marshall oddities. I have never come across any of these for sale anywhere. Anyone?
20-channel Marshall ‘festival’ mixer.
400-watt Marshall PA rig circa 1971. The Mixer unit actually had some pretty intelligent features for the day, like a 2-watt headphone amp with a simple single knob to cue any individual channel or the mix buss.
And who used this stuff? Joe Cocker, apparently.
Marshall even marketed a Microphone at the time. The Model 3700. Looks shitty. It is nearly impossible to research this unit due to the fact that an entire line of Marshall (no relation) Mics is currently being made. Killer mic box, tho.
….And don’t forget the Marshal Super-Sound T-shirt. Wow. What can you say about this ad. Note that only small and medium are on offer.
The Marshall Artist does turn up from time to time. I could get into one of these. Seems to be like a BluesBreaker plus reverb.
We’ll close this out with a couple of original pricelists: USA 1972 and Germany 1974. A reality check: the ‘stack’ of a 100-watt head plus 2 4×12 cabs was listed at $1600 in 1972. This equals $8629.69 in current US currency. Even allowing for usual 40% retail price deduction, that was still a $5000 amp. Good lord.
Phase-shift is an audio effect which adds a gentle ‘swirl-y’ motion to a sound. The sound of a clean electric guitar picking through a chord progression with a phase-shift effect is one of the truly definitive sounds of 70’s rock music. Listen to the rhythm guitar part in this long-haired chestnut and you will hear what I am talking about.
MXR did not invent the phase-shift effect, but their Phase-90 did more to popularize it than any of its predecessors. MXR’s real ‘innovation’ was the high-quality, small physical size and indestructible nature of the device. In contrast, previous phase-shift pedals tended to be bulky, noisy, and not especially durable.
BTW, the MXR phase 90 is still made today, 40 years later; and it is still in wide use. MXR Innovations no longer exists as a corporate entity; the brand-name and trademark were sold in the 1980s to the Jim Dunlop Corp, who now manufacture Phase 90 pedals in various subtle varieties.
A book could be written on the history of MXR, and it is not my intent here to share that long and fascinating story. If you are interested in the details, I highly recommend Tom Hughes’ excellent book “Analogman’s Guide to Vintage Effects,” which features candid long-form interviews with a few of MXR’s founders. This book is a must-read for anyone who uses audio-effect processors in their work. Thorough and essential.
Anyhow, let’s just take a moment to celebrate the incredible and powerful industrial design and graphic design of the iconic MXR brand. In a previous post, I included a scan of one of the early MXR ads. It still looks beautiful and evocative today, 35 years later. Everything that these guys did in the 70’s was done with care and attention to detail. Consider these c.1980 MXR dealer-support materials, including a full scan of the circa 1980 full-line catalog (16pp).
From the Hughes book, in the words of MXR founder and Phase 90 creator Keith Barr (later, founder of Alesis (!)):
“I mean, to me, MXR was an art project. Yeah, it was a business, and yeah there was the little game to see how cheap we could make a unit, but still make it reliable…Richard was the guy who was really into the sound, I was the guy who was into clever design, Tony was the guy who was into digital circuitry, and all of us were into…that’s why they ended up calling there company ART, A-R-T. We had this idea collectively that what we were doing was an artistic expression; it was the way this thing was packaged, the way it looked, the way it felt- all these little things made up what it is” (Hughes, 234).
Oh yeah… in case you were wondering… not only did Barr go on to create Alesis (the company that literally changed the world of home-recording forever with it’s ADAT digital 8-track), the other MXR designers Richard Neatour and Tony Gambacurta created ART, arguably the most innovative guitar effects company of the 1980s and 1990s; and Mike Laiacona, MXR’s first salesman, created Whirlwind, which is still one of the major forces in meat-and-potatoes basic pro-audio hardware. Incredible.
Most days in the studio end with me making WAV or MP3 files of scratch mixes or final masters. I will then upload, copy, or email the files to the musicians. It takes mere moments to do this. 60 years ago the process of creating a listening copy was considerably more difficult. The engineer would need to literally cut a record from the studio tape. And the record was not a literal exact transcription of the tape; the input signal to the record-cutting head required considerable equalization so in order to make a record that would ‘playback’ properly on the equipment of the day. Click on the links below to download the manuals for the RCA ‘Recording Attachment’ Type 72-D and 72-DX, aka MI-11901/MI-11900. The ‘recording attachment’ was an assembly that would be mounted on a turntable. It consisted of an arm, with various provisions to adjust tracking pressure and record timing, and a cutting head. The second PDF is the manual/schematic for the ‘Recording Filter’ M1-4916-A, which was a passive fixed-equalizer that provided for the then-current ‘orthacoustic’ frequency-response characteristic.
Audio + Design (Also known as Audio & Design, or Audio and Design, or Audio Design Recording- hf. ADR) is a British firm that was responsible for the first FET-based limiter. Their ‘Vocal Stressor’ dynamics processor has long been rumored to be the the kit limiter used on many Led Zeppelin recordings. For readers who have not spent much time in recording studios: John Bonham’s drum sound on the Zeppelin records is still, 40 years later, regarded as a benchmark of rock drum sound, by both drummers and producers/engineers. And by rock-music fans in general. A lot of time gets spent daily in recording studios around the world trying to ‘get that Bonham sound.’ So this rumor is somewhat significant.
Other well-known users of the ADR compressors include Mike Chapman, producer of The Sweet and about a million other seminal 70’s groups.
Anyhow. The unit featured at the head of this post is module from ADR’s ‘Scamp’ line of plug-in modular audio processing equipment. From what I have been able to tell, various units in the Scamp line were available between at least 1976 and 1984. Modular racks of audio processing equipment were very popular during this period. The concept is a good one: users can purchase a single rack-case with slots that accept the manufacturer’s modules. The Rack-Case has a built-in power supply which provides the voltage(s) that the units need in order to operate. In this way, a single chassis/powersupply can support up to 17 pieces of processing gear, rather than each little compressor, EQ, etc., each having their own. Since the current draw of these items is so low, it makes a lot of sense. It saves a lot of space in the studio, and it saves money.
Of the other contemporary manufacturers of modular processing set-ups, The DBX 900 series is perhaps the most widely-seen. Valley People, Aphex and API also made these types of product lines. The API 500 series has survived, and in fact become a contemporary standard in recording studios, with dozens of independent firms currently making a huge variety of processing units to fit the API-500 spec frame/voltage. I have a DBX 900 rack and an API 500 rack, and they are some of my most-often used pieces in the studio.
There is a lot of documentation on the web regarding the DBX 900 series and the API 500 line. The ADR Scamp line-up is not as well-represented. Click on the link below to download 18-pages of 1976-1984 SCAMP paper.
Around the time that ALTEC introduced their 947X series of solid-state plug-in amplifiers, ALTEC staff engineers Arthur Davis and Don Davis published the following paper in AUDIO magazine (see my previous post on AUDIO mag). ALTEC then reproduced and re-printed the paper as promotional material. I have scanned and uploaded the fill 12-page document.
Covered in this document: the 9200 modular console, the 9704A transmission measurement set, and the various ALTEC passive equalizer units of the period: graphic, shelving, and pass filters.
Check out the publication. It is a good quick primer on early impedance-matched mixing systems. In the future, I will post more extensive documentation on these ALTEC consoles and filters.
