Categories
Guitar Equipment

This is an actual, published Gibson advert from 1986

Gibson_1986Good lord.  Here it is.  A dispatch from the absolute nadir of the Gibson musical instrument company.  This comp resembles nothing so much as this piece of graphic-design genius earlier described on this site.  Who would have guessed that this company, responsible for the best electric and acoustic guitars of the 20th century, would have fallen so low?  And even more surprising: that they bounced back in a mere 20 years, becoming the behemoth that they are today?

Gibson_1988Two years later (1988 – above), Gibson was back to running full-page ads (this one’s for you, RR…).  Note the hilarious high-school-notebook-style illustration work which attempts to position Gibson above “NoName, NoTone, Yamawho (Yamaha), Cartel (Charvel), IBenHad (Ibanez), Kromer (Kramer – ???), and Blender (again, don’t really get how this is a dig).

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Great Electro Pop Album made by 16yo DIY’r in 1980

PhilandAndy2web_1385465264_crop_550x583Thanks TW for turning me on to this…  fantastic music and a great story!  Read on…

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Computer Music: the 80s

PassPort_1985The personal computer is now ubiquitous in the music-making process; music made without a computer is now remarkable for that absence, but not long ago the opposite was true.  Here are some glimpses back to the era 1985-1990, when the tide was first beginning to shift.

MusicData_1984Musicdata (1984): a service that provided programming to musicians who owned computerized instruments, but did not want to engage with them on a technical level.  Where are these guys today?  anyone?

MacPlusAd_1988Apple Mac Plus advert c. 1988.  Now here’s a bold advertising claim that actually turned out to be true.

Decillionix_1984Decillionix of Sunnyvale CA made this $349 audio sample/playback kit for the Mac II in 1984.  Pretty advanced stuff for the price.  Any users out there?

Atari_stacy_1990The Atari STACY ‘laptop’ circa 1990.  Remember when ATARI was a viable third-party contender?

Passport_1985_adPassport music transcription software c. 1985

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Recording Studio History

Philips INC Broadcast Remote Truck c. 1979

Truck_illstrdMeanwhile in LegoLand…  download an eight-page article from the Philips Broadcast Tripodium 1979 (catalog? Trade Show Book?  no idea…) on the subject of a three-camera A/V remote production vehicle as built in 1979:

DOWNLOAD: Phillips_Remote_Truck_79

Truck_ExteriorTruck_LayoutAlthough this machine is perhaps more a part of video rather than audio history, I came across this arcane publication recently and I though that it might make a nice counterpoint to the Bob Fine Remote Truck article we published last week.  The Fine truck, remember, began life as a Film Camera/mono audio truck before becoming a multitrack audio truck.  Anyhow, this Philips vehicle (no idea how many of these exist…) manages to pack an entire live-tv-production operation into a 25-foot-long van.  Pretty incredible.  As depicted in the images above, there is workspace and kit for a video line editor, compositor/chyron artist, sound mixer, tape op, and producer.  Pretty incredible…

Anyone out there operating a DIY remote truck today?  Tell us about it!

CableSpoolsAbove: rear of truck/cable spool area

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Preservation Sound OPEN STUDIO : 2013 Bridgeport Arts Trail

AFApostcard_front_1100Nov 9/10 is BRIDGEPORT OPEN-STUDIOS and we will be opening up the Preservation Sound Shop !  Come by and say hi, see some great artwork in the building, and check out some of the recent mic preamps, hi fi amplifiers, and tube guitar gear I’ve been working on.  I will also be selling LPs from the collection… and toiling away on a few weird new projects, I’m sure…  Address is 1069 Connecticut Ave, Bridgeport CT.  10A  thru 5P Sat+Sun Nov 9 and 10.

Our building (31 artists) is one of only 3 large artist-studio buildings in the city that are having events… learn about the whole fandango here.

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Casio CT-630 Drum Samples : free download

Casio_CT630

(image source)

How are y’all doing today…  a whiles back I picked up one of these old Casio CT630 keyboards.  It’s an unremarkable full-size keyboard (with shitty midi implementation) that Casio made in the 80’s.   I can’t recall where it went, but I did manage to make samples of a couple of the better beats and whatever individual drum hits I could get in the clear.

Download ’em here and enjoy!  Casio CT630 samples

c.

Categories
Recording Studio History

Bob Fine’s Recording Truck : 1951 – 1966

CineCruiser_1951In a previous article, we offered a thorough treatment of Fine Recording, INC. (hf. “FRI”), the NYC recording studio that pioneered high-fidelity music recording in the 1950s and 60s.  FRI principal Bob Fine also built and maintained a high-fidelity remote recording truck beginning in 1951.  This recording truck was used to create master recordings for dozens of albums for the Mercury Living Presence and Command Classics labels.  Perhaps most remarkably, the truck saw thousands of hours of action not only throughout the United States, but on several European tours as well.  In 1962, it was the first American recording unit to be allowed into the Soviet Union to record Russian musicians.  PS dot com contributor Tom Fine, son of Bob Fine, has provided us with some rare period documentation of the truck along with many never-before-published photographs of the operation in action.  Here’s the story of Bob Fine’s remote truck as told to us by Tom Fine.

InsideTheTruck_1951Interior of the truck (1951)

“Jerome Hill was an heir to the Great Northern Railroad founder. Hill was a documentary film maker as well as a painter and philanthropist. One of his early movies was a documentary on the painter Grandma Moses. The film’s soundtrack was recorded and mixed at Reeves Studios in NYC, where Bob Fine was the chief engineer. Hill had a house in Rockland County, near Bob Fine’s home in Tomkins Cove.”

Hill-Fine-FR-A-08Hill (L) and Fine (R) mixing Hill’s film “The Sand Castle” at Fine Recording Studio A.

“At the time Bob Fine left Reeves to form his own company, Fine Sound, Hill was beginning work on a film about doctor, humanitarian and organist Albert Schweitzer.  When Hill was planning the film in 1951, he decided he wanted a mobile film studio to go to France and spend several weeks filming Dr. Schweitzer in his home town, and also capture Dr. Schweitzer playing the organ in his home church.  Hill put up the funding and Fine designed and built a custom vehicle to accomplish this.  Built on a 1951 Chevrolet frame, the truck was initially dubbed the “Cinecruiser.”

TruckInt_1951Above image/text from AUDIO ENGINEERING, Oct 1951 (no author attributed).  Click here to download the complete article: AE-5110-Fine_Sound-reduced.  

From Audio Engineering 10/51: “Mr. Fine’s assignment was to design and construct a completely mobile ‘location unit.’  With a thirty day deadline, the unit (…) was designed and constructed, laboratory and road tested, and driven aboard a freighter bound for Europe and its first assignment.”

BobFineCam_textAbove: source: A/E, 10/51

Tom Fine: “In its initial incarnation, the truck was outfitted to shoot 16mm or 35mm film with sound. There was a primitive 3×1 mixer and two Fairchild tape recorders which were locked to the camera via Fairchild’s Pic-Sync system.

Signal_Flow_1951Above: Cinecruiser equipment compliment c. 1951 (source: A/E, 10/51)

“The Schweitzer film was eventually completed and went on to win the 1957 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The full film is available now for viewing on Vimeo.

“After completing production on the Schweitzer assignment,  Hill generously loaned the truck out for Mercury Living Presence recording trips, beginning in 1952 in Minneapolis.

Fine Sound van - Minneapolis 1955

Fine & Hall Sound Truck 1954 MinneapolisAbove: photos by Bill Decker (via Tom Fine).

“The photos above show the truck in Minneapolis in 1954, during a hot day of recording. Bob Fine and Mercury recording director David Hall are seen sitting on the tailgate.  The two photos above were shot by Bill Decker. Bill was a Rockland County neighbor of Bob Fine. Bill was hired on for almost all Mercury recording trips as the truck’s driver and on-site assistant to Bob Fine and associate engineer Bob Eberenz. Bill was also a photographer, and his images of Mercury recording sessions were used on album covers and CD booklets.

“Jerome Hill gave the truck to Bob Fine in the mid 50s, and it continued to be the Mercury mobile recording studio into the mid-60′s.

CRF_truck_56Above: the Truck re-outfitted with one of the earliest AMPEX 300 3-Track tape machines (right) c. 1956

“Although it was initially called the ‘Cinecruiser,’ the truck did much more time as a regular music-recording truck than a sound-for-picture truck. It was used to make all of the on-location Mercury recordings from 1952 through 1965. It traveled to Europe (England, Austria, France, Italy) and to Russia in 1962.

1960's Early - Truck in Moscow Red Square“The photo above was shot by Harold Lawrence, Mercury’s Musical Director at the time.  In the photo you can see my father getting scolded by a Moscow policeman for parking the truck on Red Square. They were driving toward the Tchaikovsky Conservatory after picking up the truck at a rail yard outside Moscow, and everyone wanted to snap photos at Red Square, so my father pulled over. CBS News captured footage of Mercury’s recording trip to Moscow which was edited into a feature story that ran on the CBS Evening News.  Here is the full clip via YouTube:

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CRF_Milan-truck_3-smallCRF_Milan-truck_2-smallThe two photos above show Bob Fine in the truck in Italy in 1958. Mercury took the truck to Italy to make opera recordings in 1957 and 1958. The truck was rebuilt in 1958 and both Fairchild mono recorders were replaced by Ampex 300 full-tracks.  From 1961-63, the truck also carried a Westrex 35mm magnetic film recorder to many Mercury Living Presence and Command Classics recording sessions.

In the early days of the Mercury Living Presence series, the truck would carry at least two microphones (the main recording mic and its backup), ropes to hang the mics in the recording venue, the two Fairchild tape recorders, a single Altec monitor speaker and a McIntosh amplifier to power it and plenty of blank tape.

When stereo came along, the process got much more complicated: 3 mics plus spares (at least 6 mics), all the extra cabling and ropes, the two Fairchilds plus two Ampex 300-3 machines, three Altec A7 monitor speakers and three McIntosh amplifiers, an ingenious monitor-control system based on a surplus telephone stepper relay (the producer would use a rotary dial to call up the mics or whatever tape machine she wanted to hear in the speakers), and all the blank tape (and/or film) required.”
Bob Eberenz - Detroit 0362 - 35mm Westrex“In the photo above, Bob Eberenz adjusts the faders at a Detroit Symphony session in 1962 with the truck outfitted for 35mm magnetic film recording. At the time the truck was fitted for 3-track mag-film recording, 3-track 1/2″ tape, and full-track 1/4″ mono tape. Bob Eberenz was a native of Jackson MI, and was Bob Fine’s long-time ‘right hand man.’  Eberenz was hired at Fine Sound after previously having worked at Altec (then called All Technical Services), and at MGM’s Sound Department in Hollywood. Eberenz served as chief technical engineer at Fine Sound. He was later hired for Bob Fine’s second studio, Fine Recording (see previous article – ed), where he ran the maintenance and engineering department.  Eberenz also rebuilt the recording truck in 1958.

RWE-truck-underexposedAbove: Bob Eberenz sitting on the tailgate of the truck after it was rebuilt in the late 50s.

“As Fine Recording grew and got busier in the 1960′s, Eberenz became the main engineer on the Mercury Living Presence and Command Classics recording sessions. Often, Bob Fine would make the initial mic placements and fine-tune the setup to the satisfaction of the producer, then fly home to NY for a never-ending heavy schedule of recording sessions at the studio. Bob Eberenz would run the recording equipment for the entire on-location session and then see to it that the truck got back to NY in good shape.

“Eberenz left Fine Recording in 1967 and went on to work for two decades at the movie-sound equipment maker Magnatech, ending his career as President of that company.

“In the 1990s, Eberenz was instrumental in the Mercury Living Presence CD reissue project. He restored the Ampex 300-3 tape machine and Westrex 35mm magnetic-film machine, and rebuilt producer Wilma Cozart Fine’s custom 3-to-2 mixdown console, which was made out of Westrex modules.

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CRF_Milan-truck_1-small Fine in Milan ’58

“Just about every Mercury Living Presence recording made from 1952 through 1964 that wasn’t made at Fine Recording (in other words, about 90% of them) was tracked on the Recording Truck, as was every Command Classics recording made from 1961 to 1966.

“Probably the most famous Mercury records with the truck were the Moscow recordings of the balalaika orchestra and the Byron Janis piano concerto records with Soviet orchestras and conductors. Also of note: the two ‘Civil War’ deluxe 2-LP albums, which featured extensive sound-documentaries made with real civil war weaponry recorded by the truck at Gettyburg PA and West Point NY. And certainly not least, the mono and stereo ‘1812 Overture’ recordings by Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony, which also used real-deal 1812-era European cannons, recorded at West Point. Both versions of the ‘1812 Overture’ were Gold Records.

For Mercury alone, the truck logged as many as three months a year on the road from the late 50′s to the mid 60′s. Literally thousands of hours of tape rolled at Mercury sessions on the recording truck.  The truck was retired from Fine Recording around 1966.   It was donated to the Oradell NJ Explorer Scouts troop, and was last seen alive and working in the early 1970s”

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We’d like to express our thanks to Tom Fine for providing this important piece of sound-recording history.  In addition to Tom’s father Bob having engineered the audio for so many of these historic recordings, Tom’s mother Wilma Cozart Fine produced the Mercury Living Presence series and oversaw its re-issue on digital  You can learn all about the Mercury Living Presence re-issue series at this link.  

One final note: The PRESTO recording corp offered an account of Bob Fine’s recording truck in their 1952 newsletter.  You can download that piece by clicking here:   Fine_Sound_Truck-presto_1952-150

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Gearhead (1979)

Gear_blotter_Acid_1978No further comment.

Categories
Guitar Equipment

1977: Guild-Distributed HH amps and effects

HH_amps_effects_1977HH was one of the earliest UK-makers of solid-state sound-reinforcement kit.  They were bought-out by Laney many years back.  Read all about ’em here! BTW, these look very very similar to Farfisa’s 1970s line of PA and instrument amps.  Is there a connection?

HH_text_1977Also this:  (70’s users of this kit).  Amazing.

And WTF.  ultimate high-school dance via HH kit.  good lord.

Categories
Guitar Equipment

The HUSTLER Guitar (via Technikraft of Illinois) c. 1979

Hustler_Gtr_19791979: The ‘Hustler,’ a little-known entry in the ‘aluminum-neck’ race of the 1970s (see also: Kramer, Veleno, Travis Bean).  Anyone?   Apparently it has a hollow fiberglass body, and at least two years ago it was tough to move at $300!   Seems like it could give some unique sounds,,,,