Abbey Road Gobo's/Screens

Here's an old fax from Abbey Road that Fletcher sent to me some 20 years ago which shows the details of the gobo's/screens used at the studios, thought it might be of interest to some.
Mods, please move this if you think it's in the wrong forum, cheers all.

Winston O'Boogie said:

Here's an old fax from Abbey Road that Fletcher sent to me some 20 years ago which shows the details of the gobo's/screens used at the studios, thought it might be of interest to some.
Mods, please move this if you think it's in the wrong forum, cheers all.

Click to expand...

I wonder what was the idea with the hinged panel; if it was meant to minimize reflection on the perspex, I can think of several lighter solutions... The rest makes perfect sense.
As to the "Bass screen" I wonder what kind of LF efficiency is given by low-density foam sandwiched in hessian... The comment about them not used anymore seems to corroborate.

Mention of Audio Kinetics puts in perspective how pro audio has changed over the years.
AK was in every studio in the 80's with their autolocators, synchronizers and automations, but they failed to see the writings on the wall. They certainly had the technicality to go into DAW development but their management had a lack of vision.

abbey road d enfer said:

I wonder what was the idea with the hinged panel; if it was meant to minimize reflection on the perspex, I can think of several lighter solutions... The rest makes perfect sense.
As to the "Bass screen" I wonder what kind of LF efficiency is given by low-density foam sandwiched in hessian... The comment about them not used anymore seems to corroborate.

Click to expand...

Hey Abbey,
The hinged panel says 'timber frame, covered both sides with cloth' so I suppose it depends on how thick a frame and what type of timber the frame is made of in defining the weight.  Dunno what these are?  I would say you're right anyway in that it was meant to minimise reflections off the perspex. 
Yep, can't see how the "Bass Screen" would screen much bass at all given  the thickness that's shown.  The BBC standard low frequency 2 ft square absorbers  not shown or used at AR, are around 6" thick, open backed and work quite well for the relatively low cost to build.  Abbey Road 1, 2, & 3 certainly has the extra bit of floorspace to spare for something more along those lines so, don't get it?
However, I'm certain I've seen pictures of the shown "Bass Screens" around guitar amps in Beatles and Pink Floyd sessions and have certainly seen the larger screens used in sessions from the late '60's onwards.

Earlier photos from Norman Smith or even earlier from Malcolm Addey sessions tend not to show screens as much.  The desired balance of everything being done in the room by *knowing* the room and then *using* the room.  I assume they accommodated and adjusted as necessary any bleed, and took advantage of  null areas in mic pickup if/when ribbons (*edit: or U48 in fig 8 ) were used. 

And then everyone started wanting dry sounds so they could manipulate after the fact or, horror, overdub their part again since they had more than 2 tracks to play with 

Cheers mate.

P.S.  Yes I remember AK being in almost every decently equipped studio I was in during the '80's. 

Thank you so much for the doc Winston

I could have sworn I posted this very doc in the technical documents section 

thanks for sharing this info, I've always wanted to know how they were made.