Categories
Concert Sound Guitar Equipment

Carvin Guitars, Amplifiers, and PA equipment: 1971 Catalog

Download the thirty-two page 1971 Carvin catalog, presented in the original glorious black-and-white (9.9M zipped file):

DOWNLOAD: Carvin_1971_Catalog.pdf

Dig the excellent non-designed cover.  Products covered, with pictures, specs, and text, include: Carvin Super Band Leader amp SBL2000, Super Lead Master Amp SLM1600, Super Bass Master SBM1500, Band Leader BL1100 and BL1200, Lead Master LM990 and LM1000, Carvin Altec -equipped Lead and Bass Masters, Bass Master BM 755 and BM 775.  Public-Address (PA) systems/components include: PA5000 incorporating P2200 head and CR 150 speakers, PA600 featuring P3500 head and SR660 speakers, System 7000 featuring P4500 head.  ‘Compact’ instrument amplifiers include Twin Master TM550, Lead Performer LP400, Bass Master BM340.  Amplifier heads include Carvin B3000, B1600, B2400 and B1050 Bass amp heads or ‘Power units’ as Carvin calls them; L4000, L2500, and T2000 Lead Power Units, aka Guitar heads.

Guitars covered include: Carvin AS50B and AS50 hollowbody electrics, SS70, SS70B, SS65B, SS65 electric guitars, AB45 and SB40 electric basses, ABS95 bass/guitar doubleneck and AMS90 Mandolin/Guitar doubleneck; Carvin pedal steels # 41B, 61B, 81B, 101B, and 1010B; Carvin steel guitars PRO-S8, PRO-D8, PRO-D6; plus a range of parts and accessories.

1971 Carvin AS-50B Acoustic-Electric Guitar

1971 Carvin SB40 Electric Bass

1971 Carvin APS95 doubleneck

As far as i can determine, Carvin used imported European bodies for their acoustic electric guitars (similar to what Ovation did at the time) and imported the necks as well.  I am honestly not sure if they made their own solid-bodies, but given that they were making amplifier cabinets, I can’t see any reason why they would not have.  When you look at these guitars, the overall vibe is not Fender or Gibson…  I feel like the closest comparison is the work of fellow Californian Paul Bigsby.

(image source)

BTW, if you have not read Andy Babiuk’s excellent book on Paul Bigsby, spend the $32 and check it out.  Far and away one of the best books ever written on the subject of a musical-instrument innovator.    NEways…back to Carvin…

1971 Carvin Super Amp

1971 Carvin L4000 amplifier head

The most interesting thing about the amplifiers is the construction method used.  Years after even tube-based electronics had begun using printed-circuit-boards, Carvin was using point-to-point wiring for their all-solid-state amps.   The amplifiers ranged in power from 80 watts into 4 ohms up to 160 watts into 4 ohms (2 ohm capable).

Guild CopyCat Tape Echo as offered in the 1971 Carvin Catalog

As Carvin still does today, the catalog also includes accessories made by other manufacturers, as well as part and encouragement to ‘build your own!’

Plenty more on offer within the catalog.  Download and see…

Tomorrow: 1973.

Categories
Guitar Equipment

Carvin in the 1970s: Part 1

What If I told you that there was a US company that had been making good-quality electric guitars, PA equipment, and instrument amplifiers since the 1940s, in the United States, and for about the same price as better foreign made goods? And the company has remained in the same family for all those years? There is only one such company that I am aware of, and to be honest, I have never used a single piece of their equipment beyond a replacement humbucking pickup and a couple of raw speaker drivers.  And you probably haven’t either.  The company is Carvin.  While the appeal of the Carvin brand seems limited to aging hair metal’ers, fusion-bros, and faith musicians, it’s hard not to have a strong dose of respect for this resilient, independent corporation.

Lately i’ve been noticing that Carvin’s 1970s guitars are starting to look pretty fresh in an inscrutable WTF iron-curtain sorta way.  So I think it’s time to dig into my pile of 70s Carvin catalogs and get the discussion going here on these charmingly-misshapen sleepers.

This week I will be uploading original Carvin catalogs from the early, mid, and late 1970s.  Like I said, I can’t claim to have any particular knowledge of these offbeat items but maybe my readers can weigh in with some personal anecdotes about ye olde Carvins.

Categories
Uncategorized

Music at Home 1973

Dave Brubeck, his sons Darius, Chris, and Danny, and friends Mark Morgenstern, Perry Robinson, and Gerry Mulligan make music at home in 1973.  Growing up in Northern Fairfield county, Brubeck was one of the local musical-greats – along with Keith Richards, Meatloaf, Andy Powell, and Mary Travers.  The picture above is from vol 10, # 3 of “On The Sound” Magazine, which was a Fairfield-County lifestyle magazine published in the early 1970s.  Brubeck will be forever regarded as one of the titans of Jazz music.  He is now 91 years old and still lives in the house pictured above, AFAIK.

Categories
Magnecord

Magnecord Historical Archive Material Part VI

Today we’ll wrap up our series of original-source documents pertaining to Magnecord corporation, one of the pioneers of high-fidelity recording.

Click each link below to download the corresponding issue of ‘Magnecord INC,’ the company’s in-house publication.

Magnecord_INC_jan1953

Magnecord_INC_Nov1953

Magnecord_INC_Sept1953

Magnecord_INC_July1954

Magnecord_INC_may1954

As I noted earlier in this series, these documents are fascinating because they reveal a culture beginning to grasp the potential of affordable, widely accessible audio-recording.  Each issue of ‘Magnecord, INC’ describes what were essentially new-ideas as far as recording and playing-back sound in various artistic and commercial/industrial applications.  Consider the example above: the New Haven fire dep’t circ 1951.  Notice that there is no mention in this piece about enhancing public health and/or safety: here, the Magenecorder is being used to “..protect() the city and the fire department against complaints.”  While I am not saying that this was the birth of ‘PYA,’ aka, ‘Protect Your Ass,’ it’s certainly an example of an early milestone.  “This call is being recorded for quality and training purposes.”  Here’s where it began…

So many tape recorders.  So much tape.  So much to record.

Categories
Magnecord

Magnecord Historical Archive Material: Part V

Continuing the thread from yesterday’s post: here are the 1952 issues of Magnecord, INC.  Click on the link to download each issue.

Magnecord_INC_Jan1952

Magnecord_INC_Mar1952

Magnecord_INC_May1952

Magnecord_Inc_Nov1952

Magnecord_INC_sept1952

Categories
Magnecord Publications

Magnecord Historical Archive Material: Part IV

This week we’ll conclude our series of archival material courtesy of Magnecord founding partner John Boyers.  John’s son D. graciously scanned every page of every available issue of the company publication “Magnecord INC,” which was published between 1950 and 1954.

If anyone out there has any issues that we are missing, please chime in and let’s figure out a way to get them online.  Magnecord was a crucial developer of tape-recording and pro-audio hardware whose contributions have been largely forgotten in the modern era.  I use a Magnecord PT6 at our studio Gold Coast Recorders to make the occasional ‘old-time’ recording and it’s a testament to the skill of engineers like Mr. Boyers that the machine still works great SIXTY years after it rolled out the Chicago plant.

The ‘Magnecord INC’ publications are fascinating because they reveal the dawn of the high-fidelity audio-recording age.  Remember that these (and certain of the AMPEX machines of the era) were portable audio-recorders with 40hz- 15kz frequency response.  These facts opened up world of possibility for audio capture.   Reading through these old issue of “Magnecord INC” opens the door to a time when the world was first figuring out all of the things that could be done with a portable machine that could capture and playback sound to the near-limits of human hearing ability.  Many of the then-novel tape-recording tasks described in these publications may seem mundane; but many are surprising and quite odd applications which never really caught on past a few enthusiastic early-experimenters.

Without further ado, here are the issue from 1950.  More to follow tomorrow.  Download and enjoy.

Magnecord_INC_Feb1950

Magnecord_INC_Mar1950

Categories
Uncategorized

Better Living Through Auto-Reverse

Well alright…  Cheryl from the Madison office is finally coming over to the condo for dinner.  I think she said she liked John Denver and Jim Croce…

Gonna make pretty much the ultimate mix…  man this is really gonna set the mood…

OK it’s almost 8…  let’s get this tape up on the deck. Thanks to TEAC Auto-Reverse technology, the tape will play over and over and over and over again all night, regardless of how long the night ends up being.

What a fox.  Oh yeah?  Like the music?  Yeah I love these guys too… Saw them at the OysterFest a few years ago…  oh yeah, glad you dig it…

*************

*******

***

I am not making any of this up.  This is an actual TEAC print-ad from January 1976.  It features single-people in their mid-30s having a romantic evening at the gentleman’s home (condo).   The selling proposition of this product is ‘Auto-Reverse,’  AKA, you don’t have to flip the tape over when the side ends.  When we were growing up in the cassette-tape era, Auto-Reverse was still a premium-feature of the higher-priced tape players.  I actually don’t think I ever had an auto-reverse walkman; they were just too expensive. Flipping the tape was just part of life.  Good thing i was too young at the time to have any ladies to entertain.  By the time I started dating, the CD was already in-play.  ‘Repeat’ is of course a feature of all CD decks.

Anyhow, this advert is a good example of the ‘lifestyle-benefit’ advertising that consumer electronics manufacturers employed in the 70’s.  Set a little stage, tell a little story, allow the consumer to insert themselves into the scenario.  This was in some contrast to much electronics advertising of the 40s to 60s, much of which was focused on ‘fidelity’ and ‘value.’  By the 70s, 20-20k performance (OK, 30-15k) was a given in most equipment; transistors and PCBs had made this stuff affordable to most working-class folks; so the benefit of one brand over the other needs to be demonstrated in other ways.  In this case, the increased romantic-potential of a dinner-date.

Categories
Guitar Equipment

Gibson Guitar Amplifers: 1966

Download a twelve-page scan of the entire guitar-amp line represented in Gibson’s 1966 catalog:

DOWNLOAD: Gibson_amps_1966

Models covered, with specs and photos, include: Gibson GSS-100, GSS-50, and PLUS-50 solid-state amplifiers; Gibson Titan, Mercury, Atlas, and Atlas Medalist (Bass) amps; Vanguard GA-77, Apollo GA-95, Multi-stereo GA-79, Ranger GA-66, and Saturn GA-45 Reverb/Tremolo amps; Lancer GA-35, Minuteman GA-20 RVT, Explorer GA-15 RVT, Recording GA-75 and GA-75L, Skylark GA-5 and GA-5T practice/studio amps.

Above is some of the most awful product-prose that I have ever encountered, taken directly from p.16 of the 1966 catalog.  ‘Butterflies, Stroking, Squeezing the full measure …..’  Were these people fucking high?  Actually, the problem is that they probably weren’t high.  Yet.  1966 seems to have been a decisive year in musical-instrument marketing; the very last year that manufacturers denied the very existence of Rock and Roll.  Most of the catalogs and advertisements from 1966 (and earlier) were very staid, grown-up, and had a romantic rather than… aquarian… sensibility.  In 1967 we start to see the bright colors, bold graphic design, and general emphasis on youth that remain in most musical-instrument marketing even today.

Above, the Gibson Atlas.  What a beautiful piece of industrial design this is.  After I came across this catalog, I looked for any examples of this unit for sale.  I could not find a single one.  While I am sure that the Gibson Atlas did not ship in nearly the same numbers as, say, a Fender Bassman, there is another reason that these 60’s Gibson amps are not too common today: reliability and build quality.  While Gibson amps of the 1940s-60s are excellent sounding in general, Leo Fender really had these midwesterners beat as far as construction quality.  Earlier this month I serviced a couple of early 60s Gibsons for a client.  Opening up a mint-condition Gibson circa ’62 student amp… I can’t recall the model, but it was a PP 6AQ5 amp with fixed-depth trem…  anyway, opened it up to find a few haphazardly placed terminal strips, and even a few multi-component junctions meeting in mid-air.  This is in sharp contract to the build of even the cheapest Fenders, all of which have carefully laid-out, serviceman-friendly terminal boards.  The same construction techniques you will find in much military and commercial hardware of the pre-PCB age.  This is not surprising when you remember that Leo Fender began his career as a radio repairman rather than as a luthier or musician.  As you (IF you) learn to design and build tube audio equipment, take some time to open up as many old pieces of hardware as you can find.  $2, $5 pieces… old test equipment, radios, organs…  check out the construction and mounting techniques, lead dress, solder joints…  you will find a huge variety of techniques used, all of which will have some useful applications in your own work.  This is all the stuff that can’t learn from schematics, and certainly not from reading (blogs) online.

Categories
Publications

Out-of-print Book Report: “Starting Your Own Band” (1980)

Ah salad days.

Making noise with some high-school bros

and/or chicks

maybe you were on the “wheels-of-steel”

or maybe you were the one who pushed ‘RECORD’ while others were in the lights

Good days.

“Starting your own band” (h.f. ‘SYOB’) was published in paperback by Weekly Reader Books of Middletown CT in 1980.  It’s the work of one Lani Van Ryzin, who also wrote several other books on subjects and near as “Cutting a Record in Nashville” and as far as one volume on creating magical spaces in your yard.  Anyhow, SYOB is a 64pp volume squarely aimed at high-school students.  Some of the suggestions on offer:

“To succeed, (a band) must flow together– not just musically, but in feelings, too. And it simply won’t flow if’s full of personality hassles…”

“It’s probably best not to start talking ‘Band Talk’ until after several jam sessions.”

“Extension cords are expensive and necessary…”

“Making music is making sounds, and the quality of the sound you make is critical.”

Could there ever really be a book of a sufficient length to offer the knowledge necessary to operate a rock-band smoothly?  The answer is no.  Lani, if you’re out there, tell us about the bands you were in…  send us some MP3s.

Back to the photos.  I am going to wishfully believe that these pics were shot in Connecticut, home of the publishing company responsible for this treatise…  prove me wrong (or right).   As I look at these images, which truly feel like they are from so-very-long-ago, I have to recognize that I was in a high-school garage-band in CT a mere 10 years later.  Trying not to cross the line from ‘historical research’ to ‘actual nostalgia.’  Wish me luck.


 

Categories
Guitar Equipment Uncategorized

Heathkit Rock-Band Hardware c. 1969


Download a five-page scan of the various guitar amps, guitars, effects, and other Rock-combo-flotsam available from Heathkit in 1969:

DOWNLOAD: Heathkit_guitar_amps_1969

Products on offer include: Heathkit Starmaker TA-16 amplifier; AKG and Shure mics and Atlas stands; TA-27 guitar amp; Harmony ‘Silhouette’ H17 electric guitar; Heathkit TA-28 “Fuzz” Booster and TA-58 headphone amp; TA-17 amplifier head and TA-17-1 speaker system; TA-38 bass amplifer (130 lbs!); and a kit version of the famous Vox Jaguar organ.


M. and I were digging through some local pawn shops last week and we spotted the above-depicted ‘Starmaker’ amplifer buried under some radial arm saws.  Coincidentally enough, the price they were asking was the same $119 that it would have cost you to buy as a kit in 1969.  “…in about 8-10 hours and you’ll have the best value around in a solid-state amp.  Order yours now.”

Kit-built electronics were a fascinating and vital part of consumer-culture in America through the 1970s. It’s kind of liberating when you think about it: a product which parses out some (but certainly not all) of the labor from the physical materials of the product; you, the consumer, can then create the finished product from a combination of your capital (money) and your raw labor/time.  I am about to do the same thing with a shed; we need someplace to put our lawnmower, and the right balance of capital/labor for my particular circumstances is a shed-kit.  I have neither the money to pay someone to build a shed for me nor the free time to build a shed from a blueprint and a pile of uncut lumber; the shed kit seems like the right choice for me.   At some point in America, the value of the labor required to complete a piece of consumer-electronics equipment fell below a certain point, thanks to a combination automation (robots) and cheap foreign labor.  This made the Heathkit a fairly indefensible option.   This affordability of foreign labor (and transportation costs…) can’t last forever though.  So I have to wonder:  as foreign labor prices continue to rise, will we ever see a return of the kit-option for consumer electronics in America?

Do you ever come across a Vox Jaguar and wonder why it does not work quite right?  Well now we know: it could have originated as one of these kits; 91 lbs of cold solder joints and sloppy lead dress.  Heathkit makes a  bold claim about the capability of the above Jaguar when used in league with their TA-38 bass amp:  “Here’s a combination that will produce the most mind-bending, soul-grabbing sound around.”  266 lbs, $499.00.