Comments on: Reeves Sound Studios NYC (1933 – 197X)

By: Clément Trimouille

Clément Trimouille — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:08:41 +0000

In reply to Maja.

Hi Maja,

I’m very interested in learning more about Jack Higgins.
Everything he recorded always sounds golden to my ears.
A true maestro at crafting the tone and mastering vinyl.

I wish they were pictures of him! Who was he ? How did he end up doing what he was doing? How was he !?

One of the best jazz sound engineer ever for sure, always bringing the magic in every Riverside LP between 56 to the very early sixties.

Jack Higgins is the unsung hidden hero of Jazz music! His name definitely is as important as Rudy Van Gelder if you like this music !

Any information about him would be amazing to learn 😉

Best,

Clément

By: John Dillinger

John Dillinger — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 19:22:45 +0000

My father, Thomas E Dillinger was a sound engineer at reeves in the 1960s. My grandfather may have worked there as well Alphonse Dillinger.

By: Rebecca Gordon

Rebecca Gordon — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 17:58:59 +0000

Hi there — I’m inventorying some materials from the former Ampex museum and came across a Soundcraft-branded 10.5″ metal hub containing quite a lot of GREEN 2″ tape of some kind (it isn’t brown or red-brown or black like other magnetic tape in these boxes, it’s GREEN). — What is this? Thank you for your help! I’m not getting much help via the aes.org usual online sources.

By: Scott Dorsey

Scott Dorsey — Thu, 09 May 2024 14:58:48 +0000

In reply to Tom Fine. Buzz was a Georgia Tech grad (which is where the nickname came from) and he willed all of his ham radio gear to W4AQL, the Georgia Tech ham radio club, on his death. I remember a bunch of kids getting a van and driving it from Atlanta to New York in maybe the spring of 1985 and coming back with stacks and stacks of radio gear that they were still sorting through years later. I had never met him and at the time I had no idea who he was and I wish I'd had the chance.

By: Dave Powell

Dave Powell — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 05:35:41 +0000

I would love to hear what is on tape 14961-29, the 10 1/2″ reel in the blue and yellow box above. The Program is listed as “Face In The Crown” music, Customer identified as Newtown, which is a mislabel actually referring to the movie “A Face In The Crowd” produced by Newtown Productions. The movie was released by Warner Brothers in May of 1957, just a couple months after this tape was worked on at Reeves. Andy Griffith is the star, and speaking as someone who was previously only used to his level-headed, slow-talking, now-Barney-don’t-get-excited sheriff of Mayberry, this movie was an eye-opening introduction for me to his power as a dramatic actor. I first saw the film in 1997, forty years after its release, and the themes it explores remain as contemporary today as they were in the late 1950’s. But I’m also a technical geek, so in addition to appreciating the movie for its artistic merits, I would really enjoy hearing the recorded music on the tape and trying to match it up with scenes on the DVD. As good as it sounds on the disc, I expect the fidelity of the music from the tape itself would still outshine what is on the mono soundtrack of the film, several analog magnetic generations later.

By: Patt

Patt — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 12:51:18 +0000

Found a record soundcraft reads reeves soundcraft corp Danbury conn would this be the same company. Song was please help me I’m falling JM it was recorded on a steel record assuming a disk record

By: Grey Hodges

Grey Hodges — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 00:50:53 +0000

Hazard was a GaTech grad and his 2nd son, Hazard (Hal) Jr was my fraternity big brother at GaTech. He was Student Body presdent his senior year, BMOC. A few years after I left the USMC, I moved to NYC, and Hal and I worked at his Dad’s real estate company, Previews. I then moved to the Sound Studios in sales where I remember the movie folks that trooped through, including Streisand, Paul Newman and Mel Brooks, many others. Dick Vorisek mixed post production sound for The Twelve Chairs for Brooks, and each day’s session was a comedy. Dick was very talented; Nominated for an Oscar for “Reds”, mixed “Midnight Cowboy” and 125+ other movies. When Hazard bought Video Tape Center with the idea he could mix and edit video as he had been doing for years with sound, I moved to Reeves Video reporting to Bob Byloff, a really smart MIT grad who colorized the NBC 30 Rock studio with RCA cameras, and that Hazard hired away and brought over. He was the technical mind behind getting into video tape. There were two video editing rooms in the east 44th Street sound building fitted with Ampex 2-in. color video machines at about 1,000 lbs each. Then Bob died from a heart attack at age 40, and I was named MD of Reeves Video. I reported to Chet Stewart. One of our salesmen had an acquaintance withJoan Ganz Cooney, and we got the studio contract to shoot the first 13 weeks of Sesame Street. Also did Hallmark Hall of Fame shoots, a Don Ho remote shoot in H! and many many commercials. I also worked with Brad Stewart. Creative processes like editing cannot be scheduled into close time blocks, yet editing was always booked by the hour. It therefore ran over much of the time and for long hours. I am not sure how the tech folks could continue that for years as they did. I burned out and moved to a NC production company in Jan 1971. Because of my relationship with Hal Reeves, I was in Hazard’s house in Tuxedo Park, NY; listened in on his amateur radio contacts; and ate at his restaurant, Duck Cedar. He as perhaps the smartest man I ever met.

By: Brian Arnold

Brian Arnold — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 15:06:41 +0000

As described very well by filmmaker/historian Dave Strohmaier, the CINERAMA sound system constructed by Buzz Reeves had 7 audio channels, 5 in the front of the theater and 2 in the back, all recorded on a separate 8-track 35mm magnetic film running at 30 ips (one track was for sync signal). 70mm films have 6 channels of audio, and the other 35mm wide-screen processes use 3 or 4, including the MGM “Perspecta-Sound” format invented by Bob Fine.

While Reeves’ design, including 7.1 Discrete Surround Sound, may have been decades ahead of his time, his staggered-head 8-track format would have made multi-channel synchronized layering rather difficult for modern music producers, along with razor blade editing. Ampex’s in-line heads solved both problems.

By: doug R.

doug R. — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 21:35:12 +0000

Hi, just want to thank Preservation Sound and anyone else involved for the photos documenting the “Louisiana Story” sessions. This session is of great interest to, among others, devotees of the legendary and enormously influential principal oboe Marcel Tabuteau and principal clarinetist Ralph McLane, both pictured in the full-orchestra shot (thereby establishing that McLane was indeed on the session, something your photos make amply clear). In fact, such followers (of which I am one) would be grateful for any other photos you might have. If you can, please post! And thanks to Reeves through its many incarnations for all your contributions to recording technology, and music history!

By: Dennis Degan

Dennis Degan — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 18:14:06 +0000

I worked at Reeves/Teletape 1979-1986. Reeves had merged with independent television production company Teletape in the 1970’s, before I worked there. I was a video maintenance technician at R/T and worked in a shop that was at the back of the Sound Shop’s Studio C on the 3rd floor from 1979 to 1982. After that, I moved into operations, doing video control, assistant editing, and videotape operation, culminating in editing for R/T, both at the 304 E. 44th Street post facility and in their studios and on remotes. It was the early foundation of my experience in television operations.
After R/T closed in 1986, I took an editing position at Unitel Video, followed by Penn Studios and the Sally Jessy Raphael Show. When Sally was cancelled, I got to edit for NBC’s Today Show from 2003 to my retirement i. 2017. It was a helluva ride.