Tube distortion adding pre amp compressor recording channel...

Was listenig to some bobby darin elvis recordings & enjoying the distortion on the vocals .....Im wondering where the distortion got in ....mic mic pre mixer tape or all of it.....Pre amps mics limiters Ive made all sound great & sound clean to me....i was thinking about making a filth adding channel... maybe remove feedback from the circuits to start with or perhaps feed pres or limiters wrong HT voltage or maybe two pres one overdriving the other then compress or  two compessors....i will experiment ...Id like make it realy distort so I could record 2 channels at once & then mix in as much dirt as & where i like.

so any ideas on this one.......

Thanks for reading.

Something worth mentioning here regarding those old recordings.  There seems to be a very big difference between some vinyl copies of a given record and a 'remastered' CD copy of the same record in terms of overall sound and distortion characteristics.

What this says to me is that the original recordings as they are on the master tape do not contain the amount of distortion artifacts you hear on some vinyl versions. The logical conclusion is that it's happening either from the vinyl mastering process and/or from the vinyl itself on a given playback system.

Take 'Hot Rod Lincoln' by Johnny Bond - go to Limewire and listen to the digi-version. Then listen to a vinyl version.  Your particular vinyl version may differ but the one I have is a totally different listening experience.  It would make you immediately ask "What kind of mic-pre were they using on the vocals" because of the heavy authoritative 'CB radio' type distortion you hear.  Listen to the digi-version - it's not there at all - sounds relatively clean and tame.  Ditto for the guitar on that track which sounds fantastic with the echo flying all over the place on the vinyl but rather tame and clean on the digi-version.  I've noticed this on other tracks as well.  So it may be that some of those things that bend your ear in an exciting way are due to distortions inherent in the vinyl/vinyl processing itself.

If you're ever fortunate enough to find some good quality reel to reel recordings from the 60's of original radio broadcasts that some home hi-fier has made you'll really be in for a distortion treat. Think about the chain you have there.

Uh, I think it's in the recordings. 

Because you hear it in the vocals, and only the vocals.

It's not distorting in drums or other loud parts, or solos, etc.

And you hear it during loud peaks in the vocals, but not in the rest of the vocals.

I don't think it's a vinyl thing.  Sounds like tube and/or tape distortion to me.

Though, some of these recordings have the vocals mixed way above the band, so you'd have the vocals triggering the overall levels... so it could be an overall distortion that gets triggered at some point....

Anyway, it seems peculiar to the vocals only, in everything I've heard.

A note, "remasters" on some of these may also be remixes, because they were done on 4 track?

I thinks its a few things & I like it all.......I can definitly hear the difference in the vynal & CD versions of the same song, Neil sedakas Oh carol for instance,tho I like to hear the cleaned up remastered CD version I do prefer the vynal but if you just listen to the CD versions theres distortion goin on there too and as was said, sometimes on just the vocals not effecting the other instruments .....i v asked questions about the recording chains that may have been used during the day & built some Mics, Mic pres and limiters & these all work well as designed & I spose designed NOT to distort, sadly I dont have a decent tape machine Im sure the tape distortion plays a good part in this.....I wonder was this distortion aimed for or and acciedent.....Ive got some plugs that simulate tape & other distortion i will fiddle with these for now.......I was hoping to make say a mic pre that I can over drive easily in a nice way of coarse to sound like these old 50s records how ever the sounds was achieved....

off top of my head here are a few songs/artists that have the sound Im after from years 57 58 59 ish.....even the cd/mp3 version distort nicely the vynal even more so......lovely dont get me started on the crackles....if you have any of these songs give em a listen..

mona lisa conway twitty
paul anka
neil sedaka
Elvis Big hunk o love
Pat Boone speedy gonzalez
whole lotta woman marvin rainwater
Slippin & a Slidin & any Little Richard
Drifters
mel carter Hold me Thrill Me Kiss Me
Ricky nelson
Dave Baby Cortez Happy Organ.............The happy organ is so distorted

tommypiper said:

Uh, I think it's in the recordings. 

Because you hear it in the vocals, and only the vocals.

It's not distorting in drums or other loud parts, or solos, etc.

And you hear it during loud peaks in the vocals, but not in the rest of the vocals.

I don't think it's a vinyl thing.  Sounds like tube and/or tape distortion to me.

Though, some of these recordings have the vocals mixed way above the band, so you'd have the vocals triggering the overall levels... so it could be an overall distortion that gets triggered at some point....

Anyway, it seems peculiar to the vocals only, in everything I've heard.

A note, "remasters" on some of these may also be remixes, because they were done on 4 track?

Click to expand...

The point I was making is that on 50 year old records the grooves get warped, needles on playback systems get worn etc.  These create a type of distortion that is not on the original masters and when listening to these it can be tempting to think that that's how the originals sounded.  The Little Richard scream is going to sound furrier coming off old and worn vinyl on an average playback system than it ever did on the original master. Same for all instruments.  That extra bit of distortion is peculiar to vinyl and the playback needle used and it may very well not sound the same as overdriving chains of tube gear.

Late 50's - probably 2 track or 3 track

Gary,

I doubt any of the distortion was purposefully generated - at least not like people do it today.  They had to factor in what the product was going to sound like on radio, TV, and on consumer playback systems which all equated to more amps(tubes) it would pass through, gaining bits of distortion along the way. So it would make sense to keep the master as distortion free as possible.

Recreating it?  Getting yourself one of the old tube mono or 2-track machines would further the cause a good bit.  Scully most likely a better bargain than Ampex   

Interesting stuff I understand the the needle groove distortion on the playing end you only gotta play a 45 with the 78 needle to hear that but in a perfect condition i would say the analoge process via the limiter & lathe disc cutter thingy adds distorts, effects the the sound of the record as opposed to the CD version....I still wonder about the distortion as back then it was possible to record with little distortion a bit later on & motown were using its lots....how ever it came about I love it on those old records, I mean I love modern clean recordings for me it depends on the music id just like to get that sound for certain recordings for myself, i read somewhere here a chap was making a tape saturation gizmo , could be interesting.

Oh yes, ditto here.  It's a mysterious sound you hear on some of those old records and it's always kind of pulled me in to a song in a way that gives equal fascination to both the song/singer/lyrics and the overall sound texture.

I still have the 'Happy Organ' 45 somewhere.  I listened to it often as a kid.  On the modern end, I was completely fooled the first time I heard that Amy Winehouse  'Rehab' song late one night on the car radio. I thought I was listening to an oldies station until she hit the chorus. They did a nice job with that one.

You brought up Motown distortion - this is slightly off subject but there's a well known track that may provide some sonic clues of interest to an ongoing raging debate over the James Jamerson/Carol Kaye thing.  The track is 'Reach Out I'll Be There' by The Four Tops.  Kaye claims the backing inst tracks were cut with Earl Palmer(drums) at Motown's LA studio. 'Official' documents claim otherwise. Assuming the tapes were then shipped back to Detroit for lead vocals there may be some sonic clues supporting or denying this based on equipment, rooms etc. Would be an interesting angle to approach the subject from.  Check out Mark Cunningham's Good Vibrations for some interesting stuff on this plus good general reading on vintage record production techniques.

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2007/04/19/good-vibrations/

Malcolm Chisholm like to go for good s/n and hit the hissy tape hard (I think).
He liked to replay his recordings real loud  too...I think if it is bearable to audition beyond the pain thresh, it is even better at reasonable levels

vocals being the most important part, and engineer trying to maximise s/n ratio. Tape was hit hard.

But tape was also played slow. Any reasonable quality 1/4 inch 2 track tape machine with 7.5ips (or slower) will achieve this. And remember you won't have that much info above about 10-12khz (think ribbon mic). Don't even try to put the high frequencies back in. It ruins the effect.

That will get pretty close.

Then there's the less important (but great sounding) effect of no-feedback tube amp driven hard. It's difficult to tell how much distortion there actually is (lots!) because of the dominant 2nd order distortion. But this is a great way to reduce dynamics, and to control how hard you will hit the tape. I've done a draft of a loctal tube no-feedback design just for this. (loctals can be had for cheap and sound superb. even the hifi folks dig them)

hi gary o

u wanna look into something similar to the "thermionic culture vultue", its a variable harmonic distortion adding unit that u can select between even and odd distortion effects.

it uses a dual control 6as6 tube and an ef86 on the input stage, i suspect the even/odd order adding effect is done by switching the ef86 between triode and pentode connection.

i think someting similar can be done with a remote cut-off tube aswell...

mick

Cool.....great info guys thanks for replys love to hear about any old recordings interested in motown tho I love motown i think they went too far on some recordings .......there I said it it....if it was me & I could control it id undistort the snare fill on My Girl....
Lassoharp thanks for that link I will read shortly...i too couldny work out what I was hearing when I heard Rehab great track, I do love Amy I wanna lock her in a room for her own good & bring her out to do a duet with her.
I got an old hifi reel to real also got some electronics from a top quality Leevers Rich Tape recorder will experiment with that one day.
Yeah would like to build some sort of 2nd harmonic no feedback remote cut off pre/limiter Iv built about 10 different tube pre amps (so far) some have negative feedback & ive put a switch for clean (with feedback) and dirty(no feedback) theres not much difference tho I usually prefer no feedback .....its just a general warmer thicker sound nice....but one of the things I want is some extra obvious distortion what I sing a load part like in Bobby Darins Mac The Knife....i spose i have to over load the input .                                 

I had a 45 come back recently that exhibits that sort of distortion on a few vocal peaks.  Not sibilance, not obviously apparent on anything else either.  No trace of it in the master.  Only one song out of 4 on the record, too. 

The Collins 6Q does this sort of distortion more obviously than any other old type I've tried.  If I were going for an on-purpose variable preamp, I might build a BA-2, but add a 3rd stage, and use a dual pot between each stage, trying to design headroom roughly proportionate to gain points.  Ideally, you'd find a sweet spot where it goes obviously from clean to smooth brown grit. 

So far my BA-2 breaks up very easily on vocal peaks.  Even with a low output SM-7 or ribbon I often had to pad at 10 or 20db.  On a really loud singer in a tile heavy room I had it padded at nearly 40db with the mic 3ft+ away and still got enough signal ! 

You don't hear it talked about a whole lot but I imagine the tube input line/record stage of the old Ampexes put their own stamp on the sound.  Since most hackers seem intent on removing these sections from 350s it might be interesting to keep or build that line section and couple it with something like the Collins or BA-2 in front of the DAW just for some purposeful grit, or probably mush.  *esp with certain 1:1s used as an interstage grid transformer to the ampex line stage with the added benefit of running the mic pre output at true 600ohm, unterminated for that extra push.

I use an old Bogen MXM-A tube mixer. 12AX7 input stage, no feedback, and low B+ around 120V (probably a cost saving measure in the pwr xfrmr used). High gain, low headroom. Apparently they needed the gain for those muffled, crappy dynamic microphones on goosenecks, and figured distortion was less of a detriment to speech intelligibility than a too low level. Designed for PA work back when PA loudspeakers didn't reproduce any hi end. I bet you couldn't hear most of the distortion, because it was above the speakers' passband. Re-amp a newly cut track through it and enjoy the noise.

Hi Doug & Lasso I have DIY BA2A with Sowter OP tran & RCA Input tran tho the wrong one, so prob doesnt sound like the original but i do like it lots as all my other pres I like them all ,all subtlely different but in the same ball park if you no what i mean....I want to make something that adds fuzzzz I like the idea of adding extra stage to the BA2A not sure what you mean about the daul pot and so on but would be interested to hear more......Iv been wanting to build a Collins 6q for a while now but Im a tube missing , I did try to build it using a different tube was fun but could get a great sound out of it so its in the junk box for now....

Interesting about the old mixer.......how about I build the worst tube pre ever....I no doug doesnt like the Altec 1566 any votes for the worst tube pre amp ?? ... I like my DIY 1566a, I also like a 438A s 1X 12AY7 pre amp....I just seem to like tube pres ....maybe i could take 2 pres i have & overdrive one with the other.

gary o said:

maybe i could take 2 pres i have & overdrive one with the other.

Click to expand...

Easier said than done. The way most preamps are designed you'll just end up saturating the input transformer. I've never heard a good sound this way, with a long list of tested transformers. Usually it ends up as almost ring modulation-like nasty distortion, not smooth at all.

i once had a Fetboy pair that sounded a little dirty on the vocals i was putting it against..

I have an old Precision Electronics 40W PA head that fuzzes up like a charm used as a PA amp thru speakers - think James Brown screams from his live recordings.  I've never tried what skipwave did with the re-amp. Sounds like a good idea.

Weber Speakers has a product called a speaker motor that's used in their attenuator boxes for guitar amps. It presents an inductive/reactive load vs just a dummy resistor.  What you can do with it is use it as the load for a small watt tube PA amp, then run the PA full throttle - interface the speaker motor output to recorder in with a transformer.  I plan on trying this at some point.

http://www.tedweber.com/atten.htm  (halfway down page)  

Honestly try out Bad Buss Mojo from Stillwell.  It's a plug-in that is very accurate at emulating a mixer with a low voltage rail and other non-linear properties. 

A few days ago i downloaded C.u.l.t.u.r.e V.u.l.t.u.r.e manual and some nice pics. It uses EF86 as input tube, followed by 6AS6 and an ECC82, probably each section for one channel. There are some some useful hints about biasing too.
I think this could make nice and simple diy project, and we could even change it a little so it's not direct copy. IIRC this we already had some interesting sketches (PRR, NYD?). Anyone remember?
I would be really interested in something like this, specially if it's not a clone.

Miha