That Early Shadows Sound

[roger bayliss]

Would seem most likely the BT/RT1/2's were in use at least according to Malcolm Addey as per this article
Maybe John Lennon used the other recorder for another reason such as trying ideas out before commiting to the final tapes ? No doubt they had both though available ?


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov03/a ... tracks.htm

HTH

[Picker]

I certainly aint gonna argue with you Ray I will be the first to admit it when I am wrong !!
I would love to upload these photos you can see the Ferrographs quite clearly I am sure I am not imagining them
can anyone tell me how ?
Rob

[JimN]

Ray is absolutely right about the Ferrograph not being the recorder in use at EMI (Abbey Road) or at the BBC - but not about it not being around until the later sixties. The Ferrograph machine was definitely available in the early 1960s - in fact, that seems to have been very much its heyday! I remember a teacher in school very impressively having his own Ferrograph (bought s/h in 1963 or 1964!). And the local library stocked a series of "How To.." books connected with various tape-recorder brands, including Philips, Grundig and Ferrograph. I remember reading the books and glancing enviously between the illustrations of the upmarket machines and my Fidelity recorder...

By 1970, the Studer/Revox machines (available in stereo and so a fair bit more more flexible than the mono machines) had started to usurp the market for the venerable Ferrograph and the similar Brenell machines. Additionally, at the average-priced domestic end of the market, various Japanese manufacturers (including Sony) were making stand-alone stereo reel-to-reel machines with the speakers contained in the lid - anyone remember those? And the later Akai stereo R-R deck was well-respected and in demand for some years. It was an object of desire - if memory serves - right up until digital recording became a domestic reality and the bottom dropped out of most analogue recorder markets.

In retrospect, the Ferro's time in the sun was quite limited, really. And whilst it was used a fair bit in low-priced private recording studios, as Ray said, the Beeb and EMI used their own in-house machines. My earliest experience of the BBC was Radio Merseyside around 1970, and (from memory) they were using two mono EMI recorders. All local broadcasting was still mono, of course - stereo was a strictly R2/R3/R4 concept until the commercial sector - Radio City - started up in 1974.

John Lennon... he did an interview with "Beat Instrumental" magazine in 1967 (I still have the edition, out in my famous tea-chest in the garage). There were several photographs showing his music room, which was equipped with an organ, an electric piano, guitars and amps and several recorders, some of which may well have been Ferrograph machines. So Rob was probably right about that...

JN

[almano]

It’s an interesting line this has opened up. Especially with those tape machines mentioned here, being the Ferrograph and Revox units in particular – well, as luck (or is it a hording tendency really?) would have it – I still have in storage a Ferrograph of the correct(ish) vintage (approx mid sixties – being a series 5) and a Vortexion CBL stereo recorder. The Vortexion, in its day, was supposed to have been of mastering quality – although I’d be rather dubious about that claim myself – but nonetheless, it did produce some good recordings the last time I used it (over 30 years ago I’m afraid).

I also have a more recent Revox ½ track 15ips recorder which even now still gives recordings as aurally good as anything digital – probably a little smoother actually.

As long as the old Ferrograph and Vortexion recorders haven’t seized up mechanically, I’ll dig them out of storage and (if they are working and don’t require any extended repair work) make a test recording on each of them of the Final Tour soundtrack where Hank plays those early 60’s numbers, and compare the recorded sound to the original DVD sound. I wonder if it will produce the results we have been discussing, being those early 60’s sounds?

I’ll of course use the direct clean audio feed from the DVD player into the line in on those reel to reel recorders, and take the preamp out feed from each of those three recorders to check the recorded results against the Final Tour soundtrack.

To be honest, I don’t think there will be a great difference with the Revox – but the Ferrograph will probably display a slightly restricted bandwidth and most likely a level of drop out due to my Ampex 406 and 456 tape stock being a bit long in the tooth these days (that’s if it hasn’t already glued itself together yet!). The Vortexion most probably will record and sound better – and will come somewhat nearer the sound we are expecting. It has a clean sound (as far as I can remember) but it seemed to have just that little “edge” to the recorded sound which would tend towards that early sixties sound.

However, I have to agree with Ray and Jim in that the recording studios of the day were certainly using the BTR’s and Scully recorders and suchlike for mastering. The Ferrographs and Vortexions just never really had the bandwidth with those Wearite heads and transports. They were good recorders for semi pro work – and they made very good tape echo units (my main use of them years ago I have to confess!) – so I can’t really knock ‘em too much.

However, I will have a go at this interesting experiment – but it could be a wee while before it’s concluded given that those ancient recorders are still in storage at the moment and haven’t been run up for a good 30 years. If I can get them going, I think it’ll prove rather interesting to hear the end results.

I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Alan.

[RayL]

There seems to be a lot of nostalgia for those old analogue tape machines but there are many, many reasons why they have disappeared from professional studios - and noise (hiss) is not the least of them. I keep a High Speed A77 Revox for legacy playback work but as soon as I turn up the wick on an unmodulated section of tape, there's that hiss. A lot of clever people spent a lot of time and money trying to overcome hiss (and Ray Dolby made a lot of money selling licences for Dolby A and Dolby B noise reducers - remember those?), but only with the advent of digital recording did recording hiss disappear.

Routing a digital recording from a CD or DVD via an analogue tape deck adds hiss and second harmonic distortion but I remain to be convinced that any 'warmth' or other 'magic' has been added to it.

[Didier]

Hello Didier,
EMI was the record company and not a recording studio and Abbey Road studios in North London were completely seperate The BBC and Abbey Road used Ferrograph Tape recorders as they were the best availiable at that time, due to the most of them being mono they used two together to get a sort of stereo until they went on to use Revox recorders which were stereo.
If I knew how I would upload a photograph of John Lennon sat in front of two Ferrograph machines playing piano and recording, I also have one of
wout steenhuis playing guitar doing the same.
The Beatles recorded at Abbey Road, but their record company was Parlaphone, In the early days I was refering to the Shadows and Cliff recorded with
Columbia (The Columbia Gramaphone Company) but made their recordings at Studio 2 Abbey Road.
Regards
Rob

Hi Rob,
Abbey Road has alwas been EMI's own recording studio, whatever the record label used : Columbia, Parlophone, His Masters' Voice, and many others.
They certainly never used semi-pro tape recorders such as Ferrograph or Revox. In the early sixties, EMI used only their own BTR tape recorders (mono or stereo).
For the Shadows' early recordings, there was different takes for mono and stereo versions. Some of the earliest tracks were recorded in mono only and were later processed to mock stereo for the "20 Golden Greats" album (1977).
The first two albums by the Beatles were recorded on a two tracks stereo recorder, one track for voices, one track for instruments, and later downmixed to mono. This is why there no stereo versions for these albums.
Externally sourced tape recorders only came in Abbey Road in 1964 with the Studer J37 4 tracks recorder.

Didier

[JimN]

For the Shadows' early recordings, there was different takes for mono and stereo versions. Some of the earliest tracks were recorded in mono only and were later processed to mock stereo for the "20 Golden Greats" album (1977).
Didier

Ooh... I don't know about that...

The mock-stereo tracks on the vinyl (and probably the musicassette) version of "The Shadows' 20 Golden Greats" were:

(a) Foot Tapper (single version)
(b) Wonderful Land (full single mix with overdubbed tom-tom)
(c) FBI.

Everything else on the LP was true stereo (even if compressed to death to get such a long playing time onto the disc).

All three of the above were new mock-stereo versions; both Wonderful Land and FBI were different from the mock-stereo efforts made when the same tracks were previously included on "The Shadows' Greatest Hits". Foot Tapper was an oddity - for that 1977 LP, the mono mix was 'stretched' using the techniques of the day (comb-filtering and phase-splitting), but there was a separate stereo mix in existence, which had already been issued on the "More Hits!" LP, though it was an unsatisfactory recording, with the rhythm guitar volume pulsing up and down, possibly due to over-active limiting in the stereo signal chain.

Since then, Wonderful Land has been released in true stereo (though minus Tony Meehan's tom-tom overdub) and FBI - already released in true stereo in the USA(!) has at last been made available in that format in the UK, courtesy of Tony Hoffman.

So... in fact, none of the tracks on "20 Golden Greats" was recorded only in mono!

The only Drifters/Shadows tracks which are definitely mono-only are: Feelin' Fine / Don't Be A Fool (with love) / Jet Black (45 version) / Driftin' (45 version) / Saturday Dance / Lonesome Fella / Chinchilla. Additionally, a very few tracks on later albums were only ever mixed in mono, but multi-tracks may well exist: French Dressing / Blue Shadows / God Only Knows (remix).



JN

[Didier]

So... in fact, none of the tracks on "20 Golden Greats" was recorded only in mono!

Here is What Bruce Welch wrote in his book :
As the Shadows' Twenty Golden Greats was a compilation album taken from our old master tape, there was no need to re-record anything. After the tracks had been chosen, I attempted to clean them up and modernize the sound by putting on "mock" stereo. I tried to strech the stereo image wider. They had originally been recorded in mono.

On sleeve of the "Twenty Golden Grats" vinyl album I have, it's written that Foot-Tapper, Wonderful Land and FBI are mono recordings "electronically processed to give a stereo image"...
I didn't state that all tracks were mono recordings, only "some" !

Didier

[Picker]

I wish I had never mentioned Ferrograph now !
I got it wrong so I do appologise, lets not anybody fall out about it I certainly have learned on or two things
Rob

[Iain Purdon]

No need to apologise for anything This site is a great combination of fact and opinion, I have been reading this thread with great interest and have learned a lot from it. Thanks to all who have shared their knowledge.

Whatever the modification introduced by the recording process - which would be minimal given the professional aim to reproduce the music accurately - the question remains: why did Hank's sound differ from track to track? ("Those Sounds" rather than "That Sound") Also, why does the recorded sound of the rest of the band not provoke the same critical analysis by us all? I'm with the fingers and thumbs brigade, that it's the way the numbers were played that made them sound the way they did.

David Martin gives a convincing demo of plectrum technique in order to achieve a desired sound. Stephen Swann who plays in our band has mastered this approach and I have heard him play, for example, The Frightened City with a number of different guitars and amps, and in two separate bands. In each case, he gets uncannily close to Hank's 1961 sound.

Iain