Disraeli gears

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pucho812

pucho812

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Oct 4, 2004
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third stone from the sun
Was listening to tales of brave ulysses this evening, what a track, what a song. So I looked up some stuff.

The album Disraeli gears was completed in 3.5 days says Tom dowd.. Amet urtegan, head of Atlantic records almost passed on sunshine of your love saying it was "psychedelic hogwash". It was released in 1967 and did include sunshine of your love, a song that dowd suggested the now famous drum beat ginger baker played. It went to number 5 in the uk charts and number 4 in America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_cHpW-TFsU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEWAEUTwSUA
 
I first became aware of the name Felix Pappalardi from that album, as the producer.  Of course, a couple years later he was one of the singers and songwriters, bassist, and producer of the band Mountain....one of my all time favorite rock bands.

Bri

 
It is either on that album or another Cream album of the same era recorded in the US that has a high level high frequency tone on every track. I noticed this some years ago but was never able to find out what caused it. If you run one of the tracks with a spectrum analyser it is quite visible.

Cheers

Ian
 
gyraf said:
the classic crt-in-the-console err?

Jakob E.
Click to expand...

When this was discussed a few years ago ( on Gearslutz I think) there were several suggested sources of the tone. A CRT sounds like a definite possibility but I don't know how common they were in studios in the 60s. The weird thing is I have not had any reports of the same thing occurring on any other albums made there at that time. I'll see if I can find the original thread.

Cheers

Ian
 
Hi Ian,

I have a copy of the CD release from some time in the 90's, I think ... so I just opened Strange Brew and then Blue Condition (random pick) in Rx and looked at the Spectrum Analyzer.

Sure enough it's there on both tracks, looks to be around 18.2kHz or so, and IIRC the field scan of CRTs is 15,625Hz (in the UK anyway), so it seems doubtful that would be the cause. Perhaps an oscillation fault in the mixing, or transfer console?

The bandwidth is very narrow, I expect that if the CD was re-released now it could be removed quite easily without detriment to the recorded programme.

 
MagnetoSound said:
Hi Ian,

I have a copy of the CD release from some time in the 90's, I think ... so I just opened Strange Brew and then Blue Condition (random pick) in Rx and looked at the Spectrum Analyzer.

Sure enough it's there on both tracks, looks to be around 18.2kHz or so, and IIRC the field scan of CRTs is 15,625Hz (in the UK anyway), so it seems doubtful that would be the cause.
Click to expand...

I have this on vinyl. I'll pull it out and see what Smaart says!

-a
 
The fact that it is on CD means it must have been present on the master tape. I thought t one time it might have been caused by oscillation in a disc cutter head but that would only show up on vinyl. The fact it is on every track at pretty much exactly the same level implies to me that it got in some how in the mixdown process. It would be interesting to see if it is present in the original multi-tracks. Does anyone know how they did mixdowns at Atlantic at that time?

Cheers

Ian
 
The info on Atlantic Studios in 1968 that I saw, comes from Tom Dowd's DVD.  Atlantic was not treated much as a Studio but was an Office by day and a Studio by night. 
My thoughts go to leaving a calibration and slate oscillator on in the console set to 18k or 20k  and forgetting it was on.  How many people hear to 18k. ( Good reason for why women should be engineers)    As far as getting there (on the mix),  It would not have to be assigned to anything,  just crosstalk in the console.  In the DVD Dowd Talks about the 8 track Ampex recorder that allowed him to print bass and drums to there own tracks.  It had to have been a simpler tube broadcast console (good sounding like emrr shows us all the time).  No facts here just opinion from watching the DVD. 
 
MagnetoSound said:
Sure enough it's there on both tracks, looks to be around 18.2kHz or so, and IIRC the field scan of CRTs is 15,625Hz (in the UK anyway), so it seems doubtful that would be the cause. Perhaps an oscillation fault in the mixing, or transfer console?
Click to expand...

Was the studio near an FM transmitter or modulator? 18.2 kHz is close to the 19 kHz FM pilot tone.

-a
 
It was not unusual for sundry gear to go rogue in the bad old days and oscillate. For chuckles I used to stand in the back of the control room when visiting some studio on a service call, and whistle softly up around 8-10kHz...  Then wait to see how many seconds it would take for the studio owner to hear it and dive for the control room level to rescue his expensive tweeters from something in his room oscillating.  8)

I vaguely recall hearing a story about this recording but don't remember exactly what it was. Maybe some old compressor running WFO with an unterminated input or something like that. It wasn't really that rare, and is anybody shocked that Cream had diminished HF response and didn't notice something whistling up there? They were notorious for playing loud and probably hearing impaired.   

JR

 
Various pieces with neon bulbs as regulators tend to oscillate in that range, I have seen it many times.
 
There are a lot of tracks even now that have that tone.
It's usually at 15.625 kHz and is mainly caused by analogue video screens. (Line timebase ?).
I dare say that having something like a spectrum analyser in the mastering console monitored with a CRT would be the primary suspect. These things were never particularly well screened and not many people would have complained about something that was over 15Khz.
I've seen this tone burst on lots of tracks.

Since you are talking about Cream records - there's something else that you might be interested to hear about. Some of their songs, particularly on 'Wheels Of Fire, were processed with the Haeco-CSG processor. (Google it!)
This was supposed to give better mono and stereo compatibility, but really just blurred the stereo image and made things sound very strange.
It was really just putting a 90 degree phase shift on one side of the stereo.
I've reversed it on Cream tracks that I have and the stereo image suddenly comes alive.
 
Andy Peters said:
MagnetoSound said:
Sure enough it's there on both tracks, looks to be around 18.2kHz or so, and IIRC the field scan of CRTs is 15,625Hz (in the UK anyway), so it seems doubtful that would be the cause. Perhaps an oscillation fault in the mixing, or transfer console?
Click to expand...

Was the studio near an FM transmitter or modulator? 18.2 kHz is close to the 19 kHz FM pilot tone.

-a
Click to expand...

\it was in manhattan hard to avoid RF there, there are transmitters all over the place.
 
Cream --- Still in my all time top 5 bands....Just saw a PBS special about Ginger Baker --very interesting

Barclaycon....
My Dad was suppose to go on vacation with Howard Holzer of Holzer Audio to Mexico, and was to be on that
plane that killed Howard.
 
I go for Andy's idea with the FM pilot tone.

Back in 67' I once played a gig near the crystal palace transmitter (overlooks London) and the radio was coming out of the amps despite the gridstoppers on the input valves.  They had 100W stacks in the studio in those days (DI had not been invented) so the amps would have been up very loud.

I  went to the Cream's first Marque Gig in Aug 66 (attached). Afterwards I found Eric and Ginger at the bar and picked up an old "Players Weights" ciggie packet and got their autographs which I still have.  Jack Bruce was elsewhere.

One of the best gigs I ever went to and the first time the very reserved English ever spontaneously put their hands over their heads in applause after Cat's Squirrel.
best
DaveP
 

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