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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.”

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.

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.

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?

listen to the sound

that money-making jingle

Ampex tape machines

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