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Pro Audio Archive Recording Studio History

Consoles of the 70s : part 2

Auditronics_Grandson2_1975Above: the Audiotronics Grandson II console circa 1975

Way back in October of 2010 I ran a short piece about some 1970s audio consoles, and now 70s month rolls on with an extensive image gallery of some iconic and some obscure mixing desks from that decade.  I’m a hardware mixer fan; I learned audio production in a studio with a Trident Trimix and my brain often just defaults to finding solutions and working-methods that are faster to do with a real console rather than via a DAW.   I would never give up my Pro Tools, no way… but I honestly can’t imagine giving up the flexibility and endless options that a good-sounding, full-featured console offers.  At Gold Coast Recorders, our Wheatstone SP6 has been going strong for two years now; I’ve had to replace the control room section due to a weird intermittent issue, but I since I had planned ahead and bought a spares-board it was pretty painless.  If you look past the real fetish-brands like API and Neve (great stuff, no doubt) there are a million bargains to be had if you are able to do a little tech work (or pay a decent technician).  I bought both of my SP6s for about $1500, TOTAL, with shipping, and put about 60 hours into arriving at a single great-functioning piece, fully cabled to my patchbays, and with a lifetime worth of spares.  Considering that these SP6s cost around $40,000 each in the mid nineties, this is a pretty great deal.  I guess I’d sum it up this way: if you record bands, if you have the physical room for a console, if you have the patience and/or where-with-all to do some basic troubleshooting, and the board is modular (very important….), I feel like you really can’t go wrong.  Given the outrageous prices of vintage outboard gear on the market today, vintage consoles represent an amazing bargain.  And a potentially amazing headache.  So be careful.

Quad8_2082_Console_1972Above: Quad/eight 2082 console circa 1972

Interface_series_100_mixer_1973Above: Interface Electronics Series 100 console circa 1973

SAIT_Console_Belgium_1973Above: Sait, a Belgium maker, offered this board in ’73

Allen_Heath_248_1973The Allen+Heath 248 portable mixer circa 1973

ADR_Consoles_1973ADR console circa 1973

Auditronics_Grandson_Console_1973The earlier iteration of the Audiotronics Grandson, this one from 1973

API_1604_Console_1974The API 1604 as-seen in 1974, and as still-seen in studios worldwide

Sphere_Alpha_Mixer_1975Sphere was a high-end console-maker that I know almost nothing about; here we see their ALPHA, a compact model from 1975

Interface_104_108_1976In 1976 Interface offered the 104 and 108 series consoles

Trident_1977Above: the Trident range circa ’77.  Apologies for the poor scan, I think I may need to invest in a new scanner.  As I mentioned at the head, I learned on the Trident Trimix, which was a ‘portable’ unit (portable but still around 150lbs!) that was offered a bit later.  I later learned the dark side of the Trimix is that…  aside from the mic inputs, none of it is balanced and the signal-to-noise ratio is very poor.  Which brings up a good point: before investing in one of these things, research the specs.  What I hadn’t known then is that the Trimix was originally conceived of as a live console… designed especially for Queen, if I recall correctly…Anyhow, yes the EQ sounded amazing and the build quality was high but it was far too noisy for modern productions.

SpectraSonics_consoles_1977Above: Spectra Sonics console circa 1977.

Yamaha_PM200_1980The Yamaha PM2000 of 1980, successor to the -“Japa-Neve” PM1000.  And apparently even better?  Weigh in…

Langevin_Consoles_1970The Langevin AM4A of 1970.

Fairchild_portable_Console_1970Here’s an unusual one: The Fairchild Portable Console of 1970, likely one their last pro-audio products.  I have never seen one of these before.  Anyone?

Fairchild_Integra_Console_1968…and not quite the 70s, but…  Fairchild introduces their INTEGRA console, 1968, with the bold notice “No Audio In The Console.”  It’s pretty incredible how ahead of its time Fairchild was.  Anyone ever use an INTEGRA?  Did it sound good/work well?  Bits and bobs from these monsters seem to surface on eBay all the time, but I doubt there is still a complete unit out there.  Anyone?

Fairchild_Integra_Components_1968…and here’s a breakdown of all the aforementioned bits+bobs.

Langevin_AM4A_Console_1968While all of the Fairchild Integras may have been carved up, the Langevin AM4A, certainly the opposite end of the technological spectrum, seems to have fared quite a bit better… I often see these on the market in the $10K range, and I have to admit I have often been tempted…  Can any one tell us how these compare in terms of noise and response to a modern summing mixer?  Anyone using these to mix thru?

Wigend_WAL100_ChannelStrip_1969Wiegand Audio Labs offered their Model 100 channel strip in 1969

Olive_2000_Console_1972Montreal represent!  I KNEW there had to be a Montreal maker of boards in the 70s… and sure enough, we find OLIVE.  Here’s the Olive 2000 circa 1972.  Seems lost-to-history…  anyone?

Altec_9300A_Console_1970

Much closer to Langevin than Fairchild, here we see the Altec 9300 circa 1970

Studer_189_Console_1972Above: Studer 189 circa 1972.  Just $148,000 (no typo) 2013 dollars! 

SpectraSonics_Consoles_1972Spectra Sonics 1972

Olive_2500_Console_1972Olive also offered a 2500 model in 1972

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If any of y’all are actively using any of this stuff, write in and let the world know how they are in terms of sonics, reliability, and general utility.  There is very, very little information online concerning some of these pieces, so you could end up being very helpful to some potential future user of these these machines…

Categories
Recording Studio History

ADM Console built for Fine Recording, INC

ADR_Console_FineRecording_1970

In the account of his folk’s FINE RECORDING, INC., operation, Tom Fine mentioned the custom ADM console that was installed at the end of the 1960s.  I stumbled across a period trade-ad announcing this installation and add it here to the stack.  For the telling of the whole F.R.I. story, click here.

Categories
Recording Studio History

February is 70’s Month At Preservation Sound Dot Com

SpectrumStudio_SantaMonica_1977Ah the 1970s: that in-between-time which spanned the earthy-idealism and radical upheavals of the 1960s with the slick techno-consumerist-complacency of the 1980s.  Having spent most of the decade as an unfertilzed egg I can’t really offer any first-hand account, but I think we can agree that this at least holds true in the popular imagination.  Media critics often use the term ‘incoherent’ to describe the texts that come from this time period, meaning that there is often very faulty logic revealed when the binary signifiers within the texts are mapped out and correlated.  The 70s saw the ascension of Asian technology, New Hollywood, and Rock-Music-As-Industry. Rock-into-punk, soul-into-disco, and transistors into everything.

People tell me that I am obsessed with the 1970s.  Now, I am not consciously aware of any particular bias that I have towards this time period (or its cultural products), but ain’t it true that we often see ourselves very differently than others see us.  Psychologists call this The Problem Of The Differential Fit.  NEways…  Here’s some photos of 1970’s recording-studio-dreamlands to get ya started.   Man could you imagine going to work in one of these crazy, lurid dream-factories everyday?  Amazing.  The lights, colors, the mirrors, the supergraphics…   Much more to come so stay tuned.   (btw – photo attributions refer only to the image directly above the text – the other images, i have no idea).1975

Above: unknown studio circa 1970

BellSound_Hollywood_1970Above: Bell Sound Santa MonicaCapriconStudio_Macon_1974Capricorn Studio, Macon GA

Fantasy_1980Fantasy Studio, San Francisco Kendun_Records_1974 SoundWest_DanDiesgo_1980_isos

Above: Sound West San Diegostudio_dreams_1971_2 Studio_Dreams_1971 Studio_dreams_1975 Studio_Dreams_1976 Studio_Dreams_1981 StudioDreams_1971_3

Categories
Recording Studio History

1969: An American Visits Soviet Recording Studios

SovietConsole1970From DB magazine, Nov 1969: John Woram visits a few Russian recording studios, Moogs in tow.

DOWNLOAD: db_Mag-6911-To_Russia_with_Worham

SovietConsoleStrip_1970Thanks to TF for the scan.  Much much more from ye olde DB mag to come soon…

Categories
Recording Studio History

1988 Interview with producer Martin Bisi

Bisi_88_1Download a three-page interview with producer Martin Bisi from HOME AND STUDIO RECORDING, 10/88.  Interview is by Deborah Parisi, photos by L.G Carilles.

DOWNLOAD: MartinBisi_88_int

Bisi has the interview available as text on his website, but when I stumbled across the original print version in a giant pile of old guitar magazines I bought, it seemed somehow more poignant to read it in the original late-80s dressing.

Bisi_88_2In the year prior to beginning work on my studio Gold Coast Recorders, I sublet B.C. Studio from Martin; my writing partner GJ and I shared the space with Jason Lafarge. I didn’t get a hell of a lot done there; one album that failed to attract much attention and a few pieces of TV commercial music; but I did have the opportunity to have many enlightening conversations with Martin.  I can’t say that I have ever met a recording engineer/producer who had such an unclouded understanding of relationship between musical performance, records, and the technology that intervenes between those two things.  At the risk of sounding a little too gushy, I will say that Martin is both truly an artist and also completely unpretentious; that’s a tough line to walk.  Martin’s got an incredible list of credits and a ton of insights to offer.   I did a recorded interview with Martin a couple of years ago, and god (or intern) willing, I hope to get it online at some point.   BTW, the Parisi interview fails to convey the incredible size and strangeness of BC studio; the live room is a circa 1860 stone chamber approx. 3000 sq feet in size with 40 foot ceilings.  Final note: all of the equipment that you see in those 1988 photos was still in exactly the same place, and still in service, when I was last there in 2009.    How’s that for preservation.

Categories
Recording Studio History

Augmenting the Feeble Groans Of Hopeful Teenagers (aka Signal Processing)

RCA Studio circa 1964.  Ed Begley resists adjusting the controls.  

Download an eight-page article, again from ‘Easy Guide To Stereo Hi-Fi,’ on the subject of ‘Where did they hang your ears,’ circa 1964 (no author attributed).

DOWNLOAD: HangYrEars_1964

Written for the layperson, this article offers an account of how audio fidelity (both the recording and user-playback spheres) had apparently achieved such high quality that the question of ‘what IS the best way to make this recording’ had at last supplanted the earlier question of ‘how do we make this sound life-like AT ALL?’  It then discusses the varying approaches to microphone technique as practiced by some of the leading record labels of the day.  The piece is only concerned with classical and concert music; pop (no mention of rock) is mentioned only briefly, and then in the most condescending possible manner.  In describing how various unnamed audio-processing techniques (we can safely assume these to consist of equalization, multi-mic techniques, and compression) can be used to allow the listener to “hear everything,” the author goes on to say:

If this doesn’t just say-it-all (re: rock music/recording history), I don’t know what does.  From (EQ+Compression+Slapback) to (doubletracking+delay+chorusing) to (DAW editing+Autotune), the kids are still want sex appeal, some of them benefit from augmenting, and they’re sure as shit still hopeful (re: wanting-you-to-want-me).

Categories
Recording Studio History Uncategorized

An opinon piece that laments the ‘good old days’ of old-school music production (1958)

Download a four-page article from “High Fidelity Music at Home” (yes this was the title of an ancient magazine…) circa 1958 on the subject of Oh How Things Have Changed (in Jazz recording):

DOWNLOAD: HFMAH-5804-Jass_Band

Yeah yeah sure DAWs have changed music, MP3, etc., etc…  but how about electricity? I recently started reading a couple of books from Mainspring Press on the subject of “Recording the Twenties” and “Recording the Thirties.”  It’s a little tough for me to get through owing to the fact that I have no interest in the vast majority of music that the author discusses, but shit if I am going to sit here and harp on and on about audio history, maybe I should have some of the facts straight?  NEways…  some interesting stuff for sure.  I bought an old spring-powered Victrola for a few bucks at an auction last week and ran some 78s on it… it sure didn’t sound great but music came out.  Music made and recorded without the benefit of microphones, speakers, wires, or electricity.  Crazy right?

A “Jass” session for Gennet Records circa 1923.  All of the sound happening in that room vibrates a small metal diaphragm located somewhere down in the bowels of that wall-mounted horn; this diaphragm is mechanically coupled to a needle that cuts a varying groove into a spinning disc.  A record is made.

A Jazz session circa 1958.  The sounds happening in that room vibrate thin polyester diaphragms inside all of those microphones; a particular instrument’s proximity to a particular ‘mic’ determines to what degree that ‘mic’ will pick up that instrument rather than the others.  Electrical signals flow from each mic to an audio-mixing panel where the various signals can be combined or rejected to the taste of those with appropriate authority in the mixing-room.  Eventually, a record is made.

The only thing that we can count on as music-production professionals is change.  Market forces drive change.  The tastes and talents of the young, both music consumers and makers, drive change.   Just get the job done and make the music feel powerful.  Shit, I plugged my iphone into the HD3 system today to provide a quick synthesis source for a vocoder part and I’m not ashamed.  The MS20 was just too far across the studio for me to bother with.   As the author of the above-posted essay correctly states: “While we must encourage engineers to improve recording and reproducing equipment… the great enjoyment of music comes from understanding its aesthetic beauty, rather than concern with the techniques by which music is produced.”

Categories
Recording Studio History

Capitol Records Studios Circa 1960

Above: the live room and control room of Capitol A, Los Angeles, circa late 1950’s.

Capitol Records Studio A, New York, 1963.

Capitol Records, like most big record companies of the fifties and sixties, had their own state-of-the-art recording studios: and on both coasts, no less.  I am currently  in the process of building a bespoke audio piece for a busy New York studio at the moment.  My client is fairly unique (these days) in that they are a very well-equipped, full-scale label studio – a recording studio owned and operated by a record label and used by many of the label’s artists to record and mix their albums.   This concept makes sense to me, as  I worked for a decade for Sony Music in New York and spent at least half of that time at their enormous studio complex on West 54th street.  The label-studio is becoming a thing of the past, but so is the traditional record-label business model.  It will be interesting to see what ‘record companies’ evolve into in the next few decades, and whether or not the ‘means of production’ become more or less a part of this new business model.

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Icons Recording Studio History

Bill Putnam and United Recording, Hollywood CA

Wow what a titan Bill Putnam was.  Not only did the man create some of the greatest audio equipment ever made, equipment that is still coveted and used on major records some 50 years after it was introduced, he also designed and built (and worked in) some of the greatest recording studios ever made (the later of which were bankrolled by Frank Sinatra, among others).  It’s almost impossible to think of a similar comparison today…  it would be like if the same dude who coded the best plug-ins that you use every day also engineered the hit records that you hear on the radio and also owned the world’s top recording studio, which he designed himself, and which Thom Yorke paid for…  anyway… amazing.  Here’s the room he built in Hollywood in the late 1950s.  Much more information is available all over the ‘net… you can start here

Moving from wide to close-up in these pics above: the studios, the control room, the console, and the console preamps, all designed by Putnam.  Okay so yr gonna move to a new town and build a new studio…  might as well design all new recording equipment while you are at it.  Putnam’s approach has inspired me deeply (on a much smaller scale…) with Gold Coast Recorders and the custom equipment that I’ve developed around my work in that room.  Here’s to hoping we have (even a fraction of) his success…

P.S.: David Kulka of Studio Electronics has made twenty issues of the URC company newsletter available for free download on his website.  The newsletters span the years 1964-1970 and they are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in ye olde recording studio lore…

Categories
Pro Audio Archive Recording Studio History

This month at PS Dot Com: Pro Audio Equipment of the early 1960s

I do not trust you, microphone.  Yet.  

The next few weeks at Preservation Sound: we bring you: in no particular order: some of the state-of-the-art in studio recording equipment of the early 1960s.  A period that I like to refer to as the ‘pre-rock-era.’  As-in, Rock And Roll existed, but Rock?  That was at least one Ed Sullivan show/protest song/freedom march/long haircut/draft card/Godard film away.  Also of note: the period 1960-1963 was also the end-of-the-line of the first Golden Age of vacuum tube audio development.  Although new valves and valve-operated products were still being introduced, it was only a short while before Solid State became the defacto state-of-the-art.

Enjoy the material, and as always… if any of y’all are using this kit in the studio these days, drop us a line and let us know…