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Publications

expectations

Electronics are incredible, inscrutable stuff that is handed to us by the gods. (1937)

Electronics are epic and awe-inspiring, and we have captured their essence and can now control it (via Atomic bombs).  (1949)

Electronics have given us the power to reach and control distant space(s). (1951)

We have now built a world organized and dominated by electronics.  See how dependent we are on these objects. (1959)

Electronics are for everyone!  This is the regular, comfortable stuff you are used to! Look at the variety on offer! (1963)

You don’t really care so much about the electronics themselves; they are ubiquitous.  But you do still care about their ability to impact/enhance your life. (1970)

This is not even ‘your life’ pictured.  This is a ‘hollywood’ fantasy scene that you will likely never participate in.  Perhaps if you buy some of the electronics on offer within (none of which are pictured in this image, BTW), you will get some vague sensation of having incorporated this fantasy narrative into your own existence.

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Is this narrative accurate?

Which came first:  The shift in consumer’s use/understanding of these objects, or marketers’ positioning of the objects?

How much of a factor was the ‘miniturization’ and ‘cost-reduction’ afforded by the widespread introduction of the transistor (1955-ish)?

Categories
Custom Fabrication Guitar Equipment Technical

The Field-Coil Guitar Amplifier

(web source)

The year is 1946.  You are a man of the world.  Bold and sophisticated.  A true musical connoisseur.

(Web Source)

In your stately home you use music to relax and to entertain.  Your Magnavox Regency 155 combination Radio/Phonograph, with state-of-the-art dual 12″ speakers,  serves you well for many decades.  After many long and fruitful years, the day will come that you will pass into the next life; and then I will build a guitar amp from your Enormous Radio.

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When I did in fact purchase this gigantic ‘Instrument,’ as the manual called it, it was far too large to fit in my car.  So with some basic hand-tools I dissected my $25 dollar purchase in the faded parlor where it had sat for a lifetime.  I removed the radio chassis (mostly junk save for some 6J5 tubes), the later-added GE RIAA phono pre (sold on eBay), the 25 watt amplifier chassis (salvaged the tubes, output and phase-inverter transformers), and two 12″ Magnavox field-coil speakers.

Luckily, my purchase came complete with all the manuals, service guides, and original warranty card.  Using the schematic I was able to see how the ‘field-coil’ speakers function in this type of amplifier.

In my previous post on field coil speakers, I went into some detail about this technology and its relationship to more modern speakers.  Now the time had come to actually build a working audio device using this antique technology.

I have completed the piece, and in this article I will describe some of the challenges faced, techniques used, and offer some audio examples of the end result.  This is a somewhat long article, so if you just want to hear the audio, skip to the end…

FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO READ ON….

Continue reading “The Field-Coil Guitar Amplifier”

Categories
Guitar Equipment

Exclusive Bonus Content!

A purchase can sometimes have an unexpected collateral component.

Let’s say you know a lady who is a fan of Charlie’s Angels.  Especially Kate Jackson’s ‘Sabrina’ character.  On the program, Sabrina drove the much-maligned Ford PINTO automobile.  You are at a local library used-book sale and you pick up a copy of the Ford repair manual for this car.

It turns out that the book has an undisclosed bonus-feature which may/may-not enhance the driving experience.

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One of the more interesting aspects of buying cheap old guitars is the odd bits and bobs that are in the guitar cases along with the instrument.

This point was brought into sharp focus this weekend when I realized that I had purchased a 1950’s Harmony tenor guitar largely due to the antique capo that was on the guitar’s neck.

A ‘Sid Kleiner’-branded Kay guitar from yesterday’s flea market contained some old bank drafts, songbooks, and obscure picks.

I wonder if I have gone off the ‘deep-end.’  But then I remember…  one Will Hoover actually had a book published on some of this folky flotsam.  A book which I bought.  Shit.

Occasionally, a guitar case will contain the original sales pamphlet and/or retail-hang-tags that accompanied the instrument at the time of purchase.  These can sometimes prove to be valuable, selling for between $10 and $5000 (if you happen to find a 1950s Les Paul guitar).

Nonetheless, my favorite random case-finds are antique string packages.  As graphic-design pieces, they reveal a lot about how the guitar manufacturers positioned their instruments and their consumers.  Here is a quick survey of some old packages that I have come across in the past few years.

FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW FOR MORE….

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Categories
Microphones

Forgotten Microphone Shoot-out

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I keep some Turner 99 microphones in the mic locker.  The Turner 99 is one of the few 1950’s dynamic mics that I feel compelled to use for studio recording.  Since we had a drum kit setup for recording in a fairly live room, I thought this would be a good time to do a quick ‘obscure microphone shootout’ featuring the Turner 99 plus a couple of other oddities that ‘passed muster’ to the degree that they earned a place in the studio rather than in a large box in the back of my coat closet.

In order to make this a (potentially) useful endeavor, i set up an AKG 414 in omnidirectional mode along side said obscure mics.  Four signals were simultaneously recorded, all at the same level relative to the snare drum.  I used the same mic preamp (the very neutral 4-channel Sytek) for each mic.  I added no processing whatsoever.  If you give a listen to the AKG 414 track,  you will hear  pretty good representation of what you would have experienced had you been standing in front of the kit during the performance.

Here is the AKG 414. Click on the link below to hear the audio stream.

AKG_01

Here is a Turner 99:

Turner U99_01

Here is a Shure 535, which was a mid-level omnidirectional dynamic sold in the 1950s.

Shure 535_01

…And here is an AKG D124E, a rare high-end dynamic mic from the early 1970’s.  I had always felt that this was a very robust, full-sounding microphone, but listening to it relative to the 414 it sounds pretty pathetic.

AKG_D124E_01

Categories
Guitar Equipment Publications

das 70s rock

I love German rock music of the 70s.  Popul Vuh’s soundtracks for Herzog films.

Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.  Neu.  Amon Duul II.  And, of course, the immortal CAN.

There is a uniquely hypnotic, repetitive, druggy vibe to so much of this music.

It’s incredible just how different 70’s German rock music was compared to that from the UK, Italy, Sweden, and France.   Much music gets described as ‘Psychedelic,’ but very little of it actually has the potential for ‘mind-alteration’ in the way that this music does.

It’s not hard to see how these sounds effortlessly transformed into ‘Techno’ in the 80s, a counter-path to American RnB’s simultaneous development into hip hop.

Appreciation of vintage German audio equipment is intense, but it is generally limited to microphones and pro-audio equipment.  This is where the German reputation for precision really seems to sell the products.  Now that I think about it, of the 9 microphones that I stuck on the drum kit yesterday, 6 were German.  2 Neumanns for the room, an old Sennheiser 409 above the snare drum, and some 70’s Sennheiser 441s on the rack toms and under the snare.

441s are really fantastic microphones.  I wish I had even more of them.

Beyond Neumann and Sennheiser, German brand Telefunken is a favorite of audio engineers.  No one hears too much about old German guitars and amplifiers though.  I recently picked up this Ovation ‘Tornado.’

Ovation is an American brand (CT, actually…), but this, their earliest electric guitar, was actually composed of a German-made body with a US-made neck attached in the states.  It’s a nice guitar. German makers also supplied components to US guitar-maker Carvin in the 60s and 70’s

I came across a pile of 70’s German rock-instrument magazines and catalogs not too long ago. Here’s a quick tour of some of the more interesting things I found…

The Schaller Corp’s popular aftermarket guitar tuning pegs represent perhaps the greatest US market penetration that a German guitar company would have in the 70’s.  I feel like 30% of 1970’s Gibson guitars have been ‘improved’ with Schaller tuners.  Looks like Schaller also made effect devices.

FOLLOW THE LINK FOR MORE….

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Categories
Uncategorized

Recording some music today

Been recording today.

We spent last evening setting up, running cables, tuning the drum kit, and getting some basic drum sounds going.

Trying to get drums down for 6 songs today.  The material has a loose, laid-back feel, so it’s not too tall an order.

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
Publications

RIP audio magazine 1947-2000

AUDIO magazine was published between 1947 and 2000.  I have been reviewing a number of issues from the early 1960s.  It is very interesting to note the range of topics that the magazine covered.  There are reviews of new consumer audio products, reviews of musical albums,  and features on custom-made home hi-fi installations.  This is all in line with what we would find in, say, ‘Stereophile‘ magazine today.

But there is also a great deal of more technical/professional information.  Articles on acoustics; articles on live sound; and every issue I have from the 60’s even includes schematics for building you own audio equipment.

Wiki has an in-depth piece on the origins and lifetime of this publication.   The most telling facts:  AUDIO was published under the name AUDIO ENGINEERING until 1954.  Why the name change?  Because the AES (Audio Engineering Society) began publishing it’s own journal in 1953.  See my previous post on the AES journal for more information on this great publication. Anyhow, as Wiki tells us, AUDIO at this point shifted to a more consumer/hobbyist perspective.  Which means that: to be an ‘audio hobbyist’ in the 50’s/60’s really did mean that you likely built audio equipment.  Not simply that you were a consumer of audio equipment.

There has been a tremendous surge lately in the idea that modern Americans ‘don’t do/can’t do anything with their hands/minds/etc.’  Witness the incredible popularity of M. Crawford’s “Shop Class As Soulcraft.” Or, on the darker side of the same coin, Mark Bauerlein’s “The Dumbest Generation.” I am not advocating either of these viewpoints; I am just pointing out that the intense popularity of AUDIO magazine 50 years ago, versus the kind of content that we get in STEREOPHILE today, would seem to indicate a shift in what consumers are willing/able to do in the service of their audio hobby.

Japan still does have widely-distributed audio publications that cover both mass-produced audio products and project plans/schematics for those who will ‘do it themselves.’  I will cover some of these magazines in the near future.

Anyhow.  Getting back to AUDIO.  So we have a magazine that is aimed at the dude who likes to buy expensive audio kit.  Also at the dude who likes to build audio equipment. But also to the audio professional!  There is a wealth of advertising in these old issues which is aimed at broadcast, live-sound, and recording professionals.  Here is a sampling of some of the pro-audio goods on offer in AUDIO from 1963-1966.

FOLLOW THE LINK FOR THE COLLECTION OF IMAGES:

Continue reading “RIP audio magazine 1947-2000”
Categories
Connecticut Audio History Microphones

CT AUDIO HISTORY: Syncron and Trod Nossel

(web source)

Many musicians in CT are not aware that this state is host to one of the oldest-running recording studios in America.  Trod Nossel of Wallingford, CT (a suburb of New Haven).

I have never been to Trod Nossel, nor do i know anyone who has; and in this era of modern ‘home-recording’ this is probably not all that surprising. Trod Nossel has a fascinating story.  The story of a dentist getting ‘turned-on’ to the sounds of the sixties, becoming a manager of semi-successful garage rock bands, and taking over a microphone-testing facility and creating a studio which hosted some pretty impressive acts over the years.  Crazy.  Trod Nossel Studio actually has a pretty extensive retrospective website where you can hear about this unlikely institution in their own words.

Anyhow, what is this about a microphone testing facility?  To make matters even stranger, it turns out that our dentist-turned-rock-impresario had been an investor in a failed microphone-manufacturing venture.  The headquarters of this company became Trod Nossel studio.  Ever heard of a Syncron Mic?  They were some of the earliest solid-state condensor mics, and if you can get one working, they are apparently excellent.   There is a very thorough and well-researched article on Syncron mics over at Stan Coutant’s excellent microphone data site.  You can read all the details and see pictures here.

I love Coutant’s site.  It is truly an asset to all of us interested in antique audio.   I don’t want to re-hash any of his work, but i would like to try and add to it, however modestly.  I have dug up the following circa 1966 advertisements for the Syncron mics.    Check ’em out.  The company folded shortly after these ads appeared in AUDIO Magazine.

Anyone ever done any work at Trod Nossel?

Anyone use these Syncron mics?

Categories
Custom Fabrication Guitar Equipment Technical

some recent pieces

Last week was busy in the shop.

This is a 2-watt per-channel stereo power amp built for our friends K&D.  It is tiny (only 10 inches wide).  The form of the amplifier was driven by the styling of these beautiful black-lucite vintage speakers which complete the set.

The speakers were made by Speak-Easy Intercom of Kansas City, likely in the early 50’s.  They are handmade from individual pieces of black lucite.  I found them with the original base-station for the intercom, all in flawless condition.  I replaced the drivers in the speaker cabinets.  This tiny tube-audio system is intended as a casual background-music-listening setup for the home or office.

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A couple more ‘Recycled’  Tweed Champ Clones were born last week as well.

I have decided on the name ‘Cassius’ for these and all future small single-ended 5watt guitar amps.  ‘Cassius’ being the name of the most famous Champ of the 20th century.

Like the previous Recycled Champs, these are freshly-built  guitar amplifiers, built with largely new components, into antique cabinets.  In this case, factory/school PA speaker boxes.

I built these with identical circuits, very true to the circa 1955 5E1 schematic.   They use a 6V6 output tube with a 12AX7 preamp tube.  They have choke transformers and a feedback circuit.  The output transformer is mounted directly on the 8″ Alnico speaker in order to conserve space.  I used a 6X5 rectifier tube rather than a 5Y3 so that i could use a slightly smaller-sized power transformer.  The 6X5 is an excellent tube which was used in a great amount of pro-audio equipment in the 50s.  These amps also will also accept 12AY7 preamp tubes for a different breakup.

These amps are very small and lightweight. They sound fantastic.  Extremely dynamic.  The range of sound that you can generate using the volume knob on the guitar is outstanding.  The small Alnico speaker magnet make these amps less efficient than some other 5 watt amps, which makes these ideal for apartment dwellers (or anyone who lives with other people!).

Up next: this week I will be building a similar ‘recycled’ guitar amp, but scaled up: a 12-watt “Tweed Deluxe-type” amplifier with a 12″ field coil speaker.