[Phil Allison[_4_]]

geoff wrote:



** Correct, so the studio technical manager "Ken Townsend" had to improvise.
The purpose was mainly to facilitate recording the orchestra part on the track "A day in the Life" at the request of producer George Martin.

Story goes Ken recorded a 50Hz tone on one track of a J37 and used the playback to conrol the synchronous capstan motor in another J37.

Details are sketchy but an amplifier driving a step up transformer could do the job - or maybe a Quad 50E mono professional amplifier, which can deliver over 100V at 50 watts. Oh, and 50Es *were* available in 1966.



They'd have needed two-and-a-bit Quads then, for 240V.


** I was hunching Studer had the motor wound to suit various voltages, including 100V @ 50Hz for the Japanese market.

But the truth is even more interesting...

EMI liked to modify their equipment and the J37s had four mods done - see third para here about "the connection of an oscillator" for speed control.

http://www.waves.com/behind-the-j37-tape

So one assumes EMI had built one or more amplifier & sine wave oscillator units capable of powering the motors in a J37s over a range of frequencies around 50Hz - which used Bulgin 3 pin AC plugs to connect to the recorder.

So Ken's synchronisation method only required the sine wave oscillator to be bypassed and the amplifier input fed direct from the channel with the 50Hz tone recorded on the tape.

BTW: this was no big deal for EMI - prior to purchasing four track machines, their Abbey Road studio was equipped with BTR3, 2 track recorders and a REDD mixing console all made by EMI, as was the tape used and possibly a few microphones and monitor speakers too.


.... Phil

[JackA]

On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 12:19:53 AM UTC-4, wrote:
I was reading in a forum that supposedly more recent re-releases on CD and vinyl of Beatles albums are going to be inherently inferior to good condition first release albums because the original source tapes are going to have degraded.

I would assume the original tapes get royal care by whoever owns them and that they would have been transferred to high quality digital format as soon as it was available to make it unnecessary to use the analog tapes.

Anyone have insight into this?

What I heard of the multi-tracks, they are fine. There won't be any sound quality improvement until the multi-tracks are remixed, but as someone here mentioned, that is out of the question.

Jack

[John Williamson]

On 05/09/2015 14:28, Jeff Henig wrote:
Phil Allison wrote:
BTW: this was no big deal for EMI - prior to purchasing four track
machines, their Abbey Road studio was equipped with BTR3, 2 track
recorders and a REDD mixing console all made by EMI, as was the tape used
and possibly a few microphones and monitor speakers too.
Whoah, wait. EMI made their own TAPE?

Yes, EMI recording tape on reels and in cassettes used to be a very well
respected brand in hifi cicles on this side of the Atlantic. Better than
3M and almost as good as BASF, in many peoples' opinion.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Phil Allison[_4_]]

John Williamson wrote:

Jeff Henig wrote:

BTW: this was no big deal for EMI - prior to purchasing four track
machines, their Abbey Road studio was equipped with BTR3, 2 track
recorders and a REDD mixing console all made by EMI, as was the tape used
and possibly a few microphones and monitor speakers too.


Whoah, wait. EMI made their own TAPE?


Yes, EMI recording tape on reels and in cassettes used to be a very well
respected brand in hifi cicles on this side of the Atlantic. Better than
3M and almost as good as BASF, in many peoples' opinion.


** More to the point, the 1 inch tape used at Abbey Road at the time was an "in house" type not sold to outsiders.

It came in two flavours, one for classical music and the other for pop.



.... Phil

[Scott Dorsey]

John Williamson wrote:
On 05/09/2015 14:28, Jeff Henig wrote:
Phil Allison wrote:
BTW: this was no big deal for EMI - prior to purchasing four track
machines, their Abbey Road studio was equipped with BTR3, 2 track
recorders and a REDD mixing console all made by EMI, as was the tape used
and possibly a few microphones and monitor speakers too.
Whoah, wait. EMI made their own TAPE?

Yes, EMI recording tape on reels and in cassettes used to be a very well
respected brand in hifi cicles on this side of the Atlantic. Better than
3M and almost as good as BASF, in many peoples' opinion.

There used to be a lot of tape manufacturing plants out there, and a number
of them were owned by record labels in order to ensure a supply of material
whose quality they controlled. Capitol, for instance, bought out the Audio
Devices plant in Virginia (which they later sold off to Fidelipac in the
eighties).
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."