Hello y’all… Once again I will be dusting off ye old 70s soul and punk vinyl at FIREHOUSE 12, New Haven CT, alongside my good old friend JBW aka SWAY… We’re on tomorrow, Wednesday the sixth, from 9PM til one. Come on down to the best bar in CT and hear some (lost)(never were)(prolly should-have-been) classics.
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From “The Old Timer’s Bulletin” Vol 33., #1: a short piece on the minor hobby of collecting and displaying antique tube BOXES. Not the tubes, mind you, just the boxes. Fast forward to me in 30 years…
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I recently bought a huge pile of the old radio fanzines; hundreds, probably, from the family of a deceased collector, likely; and while Old Radios just aren’t ‘my thing,’ the ‘zines are great, really charming+heartfelt lil snapshots of collector-life. The only parallel I have seen in the musical-gear world is Vintage Guitar magazine, which is eh so-so. I have subscribed and unsubscibed to VG a few times now, it’s not bad, and the price is certainly right, but I dunno it just sorta misses the mark… maybe it’s just too dry… Anyhow, in this era of online-everything, are there any noteable audio and/or instrument print-fanzines still in production? Anything worth checking out? Let us know…
Above: The Mitsubishi X800, an early digital multitrack audio recorder (1980).
What better way to end 70’s month at PS dot com than a to take a quick look forward, from the vantage point of 1982, at the new era of digital audio. Below: the very-smart John Woram offers an editorial in DB magazine, 1982, on the new age to come. Although digital multitracking was already widely-used in high-end music production by 1982, that year saw the introduction of the first consumer digital audio playback devices, the CD player. For the first time, the cycle could be complete: you, as the consumer, could hear exactly (well, speakers and room acoustics notwithstanding) what the producer heard in the mastering suite. Audio, which had been a chimerical, elusive magnetic or physical/mechanical fluctuation for over 100 years had been successfully reduced to an (at least acceptable) data stream. Let’s see what Woram had to say…
It’s not an easy thing to imagine the future. I see this in practice every year with my Visual Semiotics students when I issue an assignment that requires them to re-create a current print advert as it might appear 50 years from now. The students who manage to do it successfully are able to grasp that both the technology and the aesthetics of the culture will shift, and that these shifts need to be related in some fundamental way. Of course, they could still end up being very wrong about the particular outcome; only time will tell. But a relationship between tools, technique, and form is fundamental to human endeavor. Woram seems to have very accurately predicted the state of professional audio circa 1995 or so. It’s now 2013. Where will be be in twenty years?
Back to that Mitsu’ pictured at the head of the article. Anecdotal information that I gleaned from engineers I have worked with over the years had somehow created the impression that these machines marked the introduction of widespread digital multitracking, and my admittedly cursory research seemed to confirm that. T. Fine wrote in to offer a more detailed account based on his ARSC article published in 2008. Click here to read the complete article entitled THE DAWN OF COMMERCIAL DIGITAL RECORDING. Fine:
“The first widely-used digital multitrack system was 3M’s, at first by Warner Brothers’ studios out in California. Ry Cooder’s “Bop Til You Drop” was the first all-digital rock album, recorded on the 3M system. Many followed including Ricky Lee Jones’ “Pirates” and others. Fleetwood Mac did “Tusk” on the 3M recorder, too. The 3M system was also used by Columbia for classical recordings and by Deutsche Gramophone. Soundstream was the first AMERICAN digital audio recorder, but not the first. Denon had them beat by more than 5 years. All of the early players — Denon, Soundstream and 3M — faded by the mid-80s. RCA was heavily invested in Soundstream and bought most of the remaining equipment when the company went out of business. I don’t know if 3M made 100 total digital recorders. The things cost a fortune.”
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When DIY Gets Sexxxy (SFW)
From RADIO CRAFT 9/1948: plans and schematics to build a vacuum-tube powered KISS METER. In the post-war period of frenetic coupling and reproduction (via Baby Booms), new technology like this was required to ensure optimum conditions of repopulation. Apparently. Download a 3-page PDF here:
DOWNLOAD: Kissmeter
We see here the 6J5, long considered to be the most romantic tube. When two 6J5s love each other very, very much they can combine and create a 6SN7! HANDS-DOWN WORST JOKE EVER.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Schematic below.
Commercially-released albums were made on 24-track tape machines for a very long period of time, approximately 1971 – 1995. Now, before 24-track machines were available there was always the possibility of ping-pong’ing, which can get you 8 solid-sounding tracks on a 4-track machine (and at least 20 on an 8-track) , and at some point in the 70s engineers were able to lockup two 24-track machines to get, I imagine, 46 tracks of audio plus timecode. But as early as 1973, Stephens Electronics of Burbank offered another solution: a 40-track, 30 IPS 2″ tape machine that still promised 40 – 2oK response. Users of these machines apparently included Leon Russell and Roy Thomas Baker; can anyone positively confirm any well-known records that were made on the Stephens 40-track?
A helpful dude has made the original Stephens catalog/spec sheet available online; click here to download the PDF (not my link).
Let’s get back to that advert tho… WTF is going on here?
Pensive lady
Drags 132lb tape deck along beach
Nonsensical ‘greek’ placeholder copy tells us nothing
Headline hails the freaks
There’s clearly some sort of Venus/Aphrodite metaphor at work here, but what exactly IT ALL MEANS remains a mystery (at left, a painting of Aphrodite by Fowler). I could find one other similar-period Stephens advert, and it’s a little quirky, but not as bizarre as beach-lady.
Any of y’all using these machines nowadays?
Many former Stephens users report that the machines compare well to Studer and Ampex in terms of sonics. They were also designed for utmost mechanical and electronic reliability; designer John Stephens apparently had a background in aerospace engineering. The machines seem to be few and far between these days, commanding prices well above that of similar vintage Studers.
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Now for some really obscure shit
Above: the TOY CHEST brand ‘Universal Limiter,’ a FET limiter produced in 1973.
Today at PS dot con: some interesting+bizarro seventies pro audio kit that caught my eye; i can find little to no reference to any of this stuff online. Anyone?
Above: The ARRAY Co. model 12 studio monitor of 1972, which SEEMS similar in principle to the classic BOSE 901, except that… all of the twelve drivers in the ARRAY fire forward. I can’t imagine what these must have sounded like but i would love to know!
Above: the Showco Pyramid model 1000 loudspeaker.
And, at left: Sound Genesis Corp, which was primarily a retail operation, AFAICT, offered these buss (i am guessing?) limiters as aftermarket add-ons for the early Tascam mixing consoles! Very interesting. Did any one else make similar drop-in aftermarket strips for Tascam boards? Circa 1975.
Above: Gately’s Stereo Briefcase Mixer circa 1970.
Gately Electronics was a Pennsylvania-based pro-audio manufacturing and importation/ distribution operation which seems to have operated between 1968 and 1975. I often noticed adverts for their EM7 mixer in the old AES journals; the EM7 had a sort-of Pultec or maybe LANG vibe, and I was curious enough that when I found one AS-IS for $100 on eBay I went for it. You can read my account of restoring my EM7 and its attendent EQ7 outboard equalizer accessory at this link. The short version: it is a very well-built machine, and I was therefore surprised that Gately seems to be completely forgotten in the pro audio world. Anyhow, I noticed that a pair of AS-IS Gately 1800 compressor cards went for an absurd amount of money on eBay last month, so I figured that maybe the world does need to know. I therefore present: every piece of period documentation that I could find on Gately Electronics, its products, and operations. Enjoy, and let us know if you are using any of this kit nowadays.
Above, from top to bottom: Gately ProKit 6-channel mixer (available as kit or assembled!), Gately’s Moms Wholesome Audio live PA board, Gately ProKit 2 mixer, and Gately EQ-6 and EK-6 equalizer and reverb accessories for the Pro-Kit (confused yet?). Below that, John Yoder of Hope Recordings recommends the Gately C1616 studio console. Next is an advert announcing Gately’s distribution of Ortofon lathes and Schoeps mics (yes please). Finally we see the Gately Micromixer, which appears to perhaps be the same as Moms Wholesome Audio Mixer?
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Above: the Gately EM7 and EQ7, as described in my earlier article, followed by the subsequent updated versions EM7s and PEQ7. The PEQ7 seems to have exchanged th fixed hi-shelf control of the EQ7 for a five-frequency high bell curve EQ. Low frequency control is presumably still a shelf-type. I can’t find any other info on the ES-7 echo unit.
In 1974 a writer from DB (I imagine Woram or Zide; no credit is indicated) traveled to Gately’s Philadelphia-area facility.
You can download the account of their trip at this link: Gately_DB_Feb74
If there are any Gately alums out there, drop us a line; and if anyone out there is using any of this Gately kit, please let us know your thoughts. I have yet to use my EM7 and EQ7 on a production, but at some point I hope to be able to do a shoot-out versus some better-known contemporary units such as API and Neve.
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From PS dot com reader J. Roberts:
“I have a Gately Prokit II that I bought from Bob Todrank back around 1976. Bob had one of the first audio businesses in Berry Hill.
The mixer still works, no repairs ever, factory wired, I think it may be something like serial # 101w, but I will have to look and see. I kept a search on ebay for Gately and finally something surfaced… an original manual for my mixer.
I like that mixer because it is simple, no eq or anything to mess up, just set levels and pan. Interesting that the headphone out has no volume control, but I bought an old pair of Koss with faders just to use with that mixer. It looks to have very high quality components. I do not know about ICs, wondering if the ones in there are ok or should be upgraded. Does not have the output transformer option either. In a day or two I plan to feed a Coopersound micpre into the line ins and see what I get. I guess I should lay down some tracks and make another classical guitar LP, as I did back around 1978. Mastered at NRP by Larry Boden. Very fun times.”
If you’ve been reading this website for a while, you will know that I really dig old spring reverb units. At Gold Coast Recorders we have an Orban 111b, a SoundWorkshop 242B, a a DIY’d mono tube unit based on the classic Fender tube 3-knob, and we recently added a mod’d Pioneer RS-101 stereo tube reverb to the lineup. In addition, I use a built-out Fisher Space Expander in my lil home studio. But there is always more out there, and ain’t that true. Above: the Master Room series C, the Quad-8 RV-10, and the Sennheiser (!!!) CV-571. Anyone using these units for music production these days? Drop us a line and weigh in on ’em.
1977: Matsushita’s TECHNICS division announce their line of rack-mountable prosumer audio equipment. I rarely come across this stuff; they must not have sold too many of these. By 1979 the line consisted of the RSM-85 cassette deck, SE-9060 ‘DC-to-100k’ power amp, SH-9010 graphic EQ (with +/- one-octave center-adjust!), ST-908 Tuner, and the absurd RS-9900US cassette deck, which featured independent transport and EQ/amp chassis.
I really, really want one of those RS-M85 tape decks. They seem to go for about $200 on eBay (when confirmed operational). Anyone using of these nowadays?
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Neve Consoles of the 1970s
Above: Neve 8014, 8036, BCM 10, et al circa the early to mid 1970s. Neve’s US operation was based in Bethel CT for many years; I grew up in Bethel, but I can’t recall them sponsoring any little-league teams.