Who invented the "auto panner"?

[Brian Roth]

I had a random call this weekend from John H., a long lost friend and I was thrilled to chat with him. Many things to discuss and catch up. He's a few years older than me and we both worked together at radio stations in Oklahoma many years ago.

He reminded me that in my High School days (late 60's/early 70's) I was building gizmos such as fuzz boxes. I remember the "original" Roth Fuzz which went through several "limited production" <grin> versions. I soldered them together in my bedroom and taught myself how to do silk screening for the boxes in my parent's garage. I found a crappy copy of the "art work" I used for screening when I moved to my current location eight years ago.

ANYWAY, John H. reminded me of a gizmo I built back then....two ever built IIRC. I called it the "Ping Pong". The idea came to me while working with a guitarist friend who had gotten a SECOND Sears Silvertone amp for Christmas and used a splitter cord (details forgotten in the haze of time) to run his guitar through both amps. He turned up the tremelo on both amps, and as I sat listening midway between the two amps, I could hear the guitar signal which seemed to move from side to side as the tremelo went in and out of sync between the two amps.

IDEA! I had seen a circuit in a magazine for a flip-flop light blinker, and I had been fiddling with photoresistors at the same time. Two light bulbs from the 2 transistor circuit and two photocells. I made what we now call an autopanner!

I showed my original idea to John Simonton, owner of Paia Electronics in Okla City and he greatly simplified my idea and sold it as a kit. I think he gave me a royalty of 50 cents per kit sale and I took it as "adding parts" to my young inventory....lol.

Long story, but I am sure other folks came before me with the idea and am curious about any other ancient back stories about an Autopanner.

Also interested in other "I did this in high school" stomp box, etc. stories....I'm now semi-retired at age 68. But, I still keep a stock of 9 Volt batteries LOL!

Bri

 

[capacitor]

I'm no you, Brian, but I did something that turned out ok. Way, way, way back in the day, there used to be these things called "land lines" and shacks that sold radios (along with some bitchin' vinyl - it was 1975).

I was learning how to play guitar, around 9th grade or so, and my folks bought me - no kidding - a plywood SG copy made by Ampeg, called a Stud. I hacked it up by putting the guts of a really small/cheap distortion pedal under the pickguard. (edit: an EH Muff Fuzz, which had an output level control and that was it.) It actually sounded decent, using headphones plugged directly into the output jack. No amp though. Probably for good reason.

At the time, I was also working at RS trying to learn how to do repairs. I was given a semi-broken Realistic speakerphone; I think the microphone was busted. I wired up an external 1/8" jack in place of the mic, made a 1/4" to 1/8" mono cable and plugged the guitar in.

What I then could do was call all (3) of my friends up and treat them to live serenades through their phones.

The speaker turned off whenever anything was played, though (by design; any mic input above a certain level muted the speaker), so I never actually heard myself.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Neat stories. In the early 80s I used to look at the Paia 4700 series synth kit ads in Keyboard magazine and wish I had the spare bucks to buy them. A friend and I kept the university library's copy of Craig Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians permanently checked out to one of us for a semester or two. Good times.

 

[ruffrecords]

I went to university to study electronics in 1970. We were the first year that was NOT taught valves. Digital electronics was limited to 7400 series gates and the things you could do with them. I graduated in 1973 and a year later got a job designing mixers at Neve. One thing I noticed was that for stereo buses they used a switch to route a channel to the left bus, another to route to the right bus and a third to engage the pan pot. I realised that an exclusive OR gate could be used so that the pan was automatically switched in when both left and right buttons were pressed. The exclusive OR gate is actually implemented by the two switches themselves so no actual external logic gates were required. This has now been immortalised in Geoff Tanner's Neve Technical Info sheets.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Tubetec]

There is a few vintage Gibson stereo guitar amps with reverb and trem from the early 60's , the had a v shaped front baffle to give extra width to the sound dispersion , never heard one or even seen one this side of the pond.
Gibson Ga-79rtv

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Magnatone made some stereo guitar amps back in the 50s, also. Buddy Holly bought one of their high end ones when he lived in NYC shortly before his untimely death. This model had "stereo vibrato."

https://www.vintageguitar.com/11040/buddy-hollys-58-magnatone-280/

 

[Tubetec]

lots going on under the hood there , maybe CJ's seen a few of these in his day .

 

[Tubetec]

I learned about logic gates a very long time ago now , its all gone a bit fuzzy around the edges .
Thanks for sharing that with us Ian , handy way to save on an extra switch for the panpot .

 

[fazer]

As far as auto pan modules, The ADR S23 auto pan was out in the late70s early 80s. I still have mine. I’m sure there were autopan synth modules using VCAs with an inverted LFO going back to the early 70s

 

[Tubetec]

I rigged up a couple of Boss chorus pedals with external LFO input , I then used a two channel arb gen to modulate them , on certain settings it functioned like an autopanner with a harmoniser , direct signal from the guitar pick up was reproduced via a guitar amp in the middle , the chorus treated sounds I fed to monitors left and right .
You had to play around with it a bit to suit the source and the tempo of the music involved , but it wasnt difficult to find some quite pleasing sounds .

 

[Brian Roth]

As far as auto pan modules, The ADR S23 auto pan was out in the late70s early 80s. I still have mine. I’m sure there were autopan synth modules using VCAs with an inverted LFO going back to the early 70s

I worked at a studio in the 1980's which had two SCAMP racks and we had two S23 modules. Those went a LOT further than my simple Ping Pong design from the late 1960's. One handy feature of the S23 was a level sensitive trigger to cause the pan to occur.

Bri

 

[Tubetec]

The Marshall time modulator is another of those funky 70's boxes of tricks , very rare and hard to find now ,
Was a favourite of Martin Hannett who produced Joy Division and many other great Manchester bands ,
the musicians nicknamed it the 'Marshall time waster' .

 

[JohnRoberts]

I went to university to study electronics in 1970. We were the first year that was NOT taught valves. Digital electronics was limited to 7400 series gates and the things you could do with them. I graduated in 1973 and a year later got a job designing mixers at Neve. One thing I noticed was that for stereo buses they used a switch to route a channel to the left bus, another to route to the right bus and a third to engage the pan pot. I realised that an exclusive OR gate could be used so that the pan was automatically switched in when both left and right buttons were pressed. The exclusive OR gate is actually implemented by the two switches themselves so no actual external logic gates were required. This has now been immortalised in Geoff Tanner's Neve Technical Info sheets.

Cheers

Ian

Coincidentally I recall being interviewed for a job (maintaining electronics) on a research vessel in the Pacific ocean in 1970. The test question I was asked was to draw up and explain a bi-stable (flip flop?) using discrete transistors. I did well enough to get hired for the gig , only to have my draft board suggest that they had different plans for me that didn't include leaving the country to join a ship at sea, but instead involved basic training at Ft Dix NJ.
===

Inside consoles we often use crude discrete "or" logic (AKA diodes with cathodes multed together), or other simple logic functions. 4000 series CMOS logic was popular with old analog guys (at least this old analog guy).

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Theres a great quote from maritime history ,
whats the difference between a prison and a ship , you cant sink a prison ,
out of the frying pan into the fire ,
The brick shit house built are the first to get sent out to war ,
you must have had an arc angel sitting on your shoulder Johnny boy

 

[Tubetec]

 

[JohnRoberts]

Theres a great quote from maritime history ,
whats the difference between a prison and a ship , you cant sink a prison ,

You can't swim home from a prison while some have tried from Alcatraz.

out of the frying pan into the fire ,
The brick shit house built are the first to get sent out to war ,
you must have had an arc angel sitting on your shoulder Johnny boy

moi?

As often happens I don't grasp that reference either. "Ark angel" from the spy novel series, or "arch angel" (Michael) from the bible?

My older brother RIP was also drafted a couple years before I was, so from just my family I was second to go. Coincidentally that same older brother who was drafted before me, also did a tour on one of Columbia University's research vessels. He worked as a laborer (wiper), not scientific crew like my job that was cushier.

I was extremely disappointed to get drafted into the army instead of Columbia University flying me out to meet the research ship in the South Pacific. That leg of the cruise included port calls in Tahiti, Fiji, Midway Island, etc. IIRC the initial flight out was connecting through Hawaii. Of course the job involved 30 days at sea in a row, then a couple days in port to channel drunken sailors everywhere. Sober up, rinse and repeat.

To further add to my disappointment, around that same time frame my roommates from Boston who were just graduating college, bought an old school bus and outfitted it with bunks to sleep in the back so they could drive it across country. One bunk would have been mine. Sadly I had a previous engagement with the first infantry division.

JR

 

[pucho812]

In the old days of audio, young apprentices wanting to be audio engineers were often seen running the pan pot. This was the first step of many steps up the staircase to being an audio engineer. Often referred to as the panner -boy in the u.k. With progression in technology, the position was eliminated when auto-pan was developed.

 

[Harvey Birdman]

I think this may be one of the first auto panners, it was actually a phaser or as it says "Stereo Phasor". It was made by the company Ace Tone that in some manner went on to be Roland.

I loved this pedal, got it back in the mid to late 70's if I remember correctly. Used on my Wurly Electric Piano but it really came into it's own when I got the Korg CX-3 Organ (Hammond clone) in 1979. Even though the CX-3 had the Leslie simulator, it just didn't have that movement that a real Leslie had, so I'd take the output of the CX-3 and run it into the Stereo Phasor, put it on slow speed, then take the left and right outputs into two small 40 watt amps separated by about 6 feet. It made a huge difference particularly when the Leslie effect was on slow. I was so impressed I bought a second one that I kept in my home studio.... still got it.... and here it is.

At some stage in the early 80's I was going to remove it from its case and rack mount it but like a lot of things I was going to do... I never got around to it. Cheers