That Early Shadows Sound

[Martin Page]

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

Hi Didier, I thought we'd been down this route before. Certainly in the U.K., the first two albums were issued in stereo also:

Please Please Me - PCS 3042

With The Beatles - PCS 3045

Regards, Martin.

[Didier]

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

Hi Didier, I thought we'd been down this route before. Certainly in the U.K., the first two albums were issued in stereo also:

Please Please Me - PCS 3042

With The Beatles - PCS 3045

Regards, Martin.

But was it real stereo ot mock stereo ? I remember I bought at great expense imported US Capitol releases because they were labelled "stereo" (I still have them), but thet were mock stereo...

Didier

[cockroach]

YES!!!! Talk about REAL recorders at last, not impenetrable (to me) digital stuff!!!

Jim, I still have my old Sony TC 270 with lid speakers, I also had Ferguson, Phillips and others years ago- I used to hook up two reel to reel recorders to create multi track recordings in the '70's, before I bought one of the new 'cutting edge' 4 track Fostex 250 cassette tape recorder/mixer jobs in about 1984.

I saw a Revox A77 in a pawnshop locally recently, very tempting but $300 AUS, about 180 quid...is it worth it, assuming it still works, chaps? I still have boxes of my old reel to reel tapes, including recordings of a lot of early original songs, band gigs and jams etc which I'd love to hear again..if the tapes haven't finally deteriorated.

[JimN]

Didier,

The first two Beatles (UK) albums were released in true stereo on the discs mentioned by Martin (above). But by "true stereo", I mean that they were produced from a genuine two-track master with different information on each channel and not from a mono master artificially reprocessed for stereo.

The technique used for those two vinyl LPs is known to Beatles (and other) cognoscenti as "George Martin stereo" - broadly, the instruments (or most of them) are on one side of the stereo picture and the vocal (most of them) on the other side, with certain extras (eg, handclaps) on the vocal side (logically) and the legendary Abbey Road stereo reverb melding the two channels together into a sort-of harmonious whole. This is no longer limited to vintage vinyl, by the way. The stereo versions have at last been issued on CD in the UK and internationally, about a year ago. It is now possible to get any Beatles album in stereo (on CD) and any which were ever originally available in mono, in mono (a long-standing collector demand satisfied at last). One or two tracks (eg, Love Me Do and She Loves You) only have mono extant masters though, and are not presented in stereo for that obvious reason.

I'll probably get it in the neck from Malcolm Addey for this, but "George Martin stereo" (not my phrase in any case) is probably highly valid as a term, because George is well-known to have been intimately involved with the (British) stereo versions of the Beatles albums, and he is equally well-known known to have been unhappy with the stereo versions of "Please Please Me" and "With The Beatles". On the other hand, I know that Malcolm was unhappy with my reference to Norrie Paramor's stereo production in an old SCOFA article for the reason that Norrie apparently left all such matters to the technical staff, especially Malcolm.

The "George Martin stereo" technique for rendering a two-track multitrack in a form of stereo was not peculiar to George. Similar techniques were employed on some Wally Ridley and Norrie Paramor productions. The easiest example to reference for Shads collectors is the stereo version of I Want You To Want Me* which uses exactly the same process. Wally's Swinging Blue Jeans material often ended up the same way (though this is largely a CD-era issue - how many original stereo LPs they sold is food for conjecture).

JN

[* available on: "Somethin' Else!!" - LP EMI/Regal (UK) SRS 5012 (stereo)
"The Shadows - British Hit Revival; Volume 3" - LP Electrola (D) C 048-51 765 (stereo)
"The Early Years" - CDx6 EMI (UK) CD SHAD 14 (stereo)
"The Shadows Collection" - CDx3 EMI/MfP/Trio (UK) 8 52621 2 - 8 52623 2 inc (stereo)]

[almano]

Ray and Didier have both made very good points with their postings in this thread, in that they both highlight the factor of noise and distortion in the recorded sound of those early years.

It has to be remembered that any form of noise reduction was non existent at that time. Dolby and other forms of noise reduction didn’t come into play until many years later. Obviously these days we are using digital recording for virtually everything, and all we really have to worry about there are things like dithering and digital overload, but inherent intrusive additions to the original sound such as signal to noise ratio and wow and flutter are long gone down the road and therefore play no noticeable part in recorded music these days. We have lost the non linearities (tape compression), varied distortions and electrical noise from the recording chain – we now convert to digital at a very early stage of the process when recording (usually on a computer these days) and until the finished CD is played back through an audio system, does it then revert back to analogue for the speakers. So, all those noises and distortions which we lived with and never really noticed at the time are not now part of the recording process today.

The Cedar process/algorithms and similar pro level clean up software will more or less get rid of noise from an analogue recording, and to an extent they can “correct” distortions – but they can’t make the sound of an old mixing desk and BTR recorder sound like a much later Solid State Logic desk and Studer system – that audio “signature” of the original recording is already there “in place” for posterity.

The whole recording chain in the early sixties was all valve – so how much did that contribute to the sound? As Ray said, there are distortions aplenty with valves, but generally they are in “harmonious harmonic” ranges and thus sound sweet and pleasant (mostly) – so we find them acceptable.

From what I can remember, I believe EMI (Columbia) were using Leak TL12’s to drive the cutter heads at the time. A strange choice if this is true as cutter heads in later years were being driven by 300 watt jobs – and of course a reverse RIAA curve and mirror tracking distortions had to be introduced along with the signal. So it’s a lot to ask of the old TL12’s. But, if they were actually the cutter head amps used on the Shad’s sessions, that’s yet another point of interest and discussion!

Get’s rather interesting don’t it!

Cheers,

Alan.

[ecca]

This is a great thread.

[AlanMcKillop]

Not what you said in Message 4, now ammended.

[RayL]

Just to get it clear with regard to those two early Beatles albums, is it being suggested here that the stereo versions were issued on vinyl at the same time as the mono versions?

The reason I ask is because when George Martin was interviewed for the radio programme The Record Producers he stated very clearly that he recorded those albums "in two track, not stereo" with the voices on one track and the rhythm on the other with the aim of compressing them together to make "a harder sound" (his words) for mono release.

On a separate recording (I think it's a programme about Abbey Road, but I'd have to look through my cassette collection to find it), it is explained that when EMI wanted to make stereo versions of those early albums, George had already left EMI to go to independent at Air Studios. Back at EMI, they got out the two-track tape, listened to it and said to themselves "Well, if a producer as prestigious as George Martin recorded the tape in this way, that must be how he intended the stereo to be". They didn''t ask George, otherwise he would have put them straight.

By the time George did get to hear these 'stereo' albums it was too late, of course, and now they are accepted as the 'true' version. However, from George's own lips, these two-track recordings were never intended to be used as they were for a stereo album.

Ray

[Didier]

Didier,

The first two Beatles (UK) albums were released in true stereo on the discs mentioned by Martin (above). But by "true stereo", I mean that they were produced from a genuine two-track master with different information on each channel and not from a mono master artificially reprocessed for stereo.

The technique used for those two vinyl LPs is known to Beatles (and other) cognoscenti as "George Martin stereo" - broadly, the instruments (or most of them) are on one side of the stereo picture and the vocal (most of them) on the other side, with certain extras (eg, handclaps) on the vocal side (logically) and the legendary Abbey Road stereo reverb melding the two channels together into a sort-of harmonious whole.

This was commonplace in the early days of stereo, not only at Abbey Road. It was generally called "ping-pong stereo". A few of the Shadows stereo recordings are made this way, with the lead on one side, and the backing on the other side, which makes it very easy to extract a BT from it !

I have been equipped for stereo since the early sixties, and of course always looked for stereo releases. The first Shadows' stereo record I bought was the second album (10" French release). I already had the first album (10" French release) but it was released in mono only. Soon after, during one of my visit in England I bought again the first album (UK 12" stereo release).Of course I now also have for these two first albums the EMI CD releases containing both the mono and stereo versions for each track.

I have never listened yet to any real stereo recordings for the Beatles' first two albums. If they were released in Uk as indicated, I wonder why they weren't in France, and why the US stereo releases on the Capitol label are in mock stereo, with no noticeable stereo effect (and very poor sound quality compared to the Shdows' recordings of the same time).

The stereo versions have at last been issued on CD in the UK and internationally, about a year ago. It is now possible to get any Beatles album in stereo (on CD)

I'll have to look for that !

Didier

[John M]

Yep..those Sony tape recorders.
I still have a Sony TC630.. three heads, 4 track stereo with the speakers in the lids.. and quite a decent amp built in as well.

Heres a pic of one.

http://www.hifiengine.com/images/model/sony_tc-630.jpg