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Post by EmRR on Jan 9, 2019 15:53:54 GMT -6
crude iPhone video of a 26W I just finished restoration of. I put expanded fully variable attack and release on a bracket inside the front door panel, moved from the rear where they live normally. |
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Post by jeremygillespie on Jan 9, 2019 16:35:17 GMT -6
Nice! Always good to hear some Meters while watching some meters haha.
When I was working with Jason Corsaro as his assistant for years he would dig out his stereo Collins and strap it on the bus for special occasions. That thing was absolutely awesome. He certainly had the magic touch with it.
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Post by EmRR on Jan 9, 2019 16:38:48 GMT -6
Nice! Always good to hear some Meters while watching some meters haha. When I was working with Jason Corsaro as his assistant for years he would dig out his stereo Collins and strap it on the bus for special occasions. That thing was absolutely awesome. He certainly had the magic touch with it. Oh yeah, the 26U-2, I had one of those for a long time. I think Marc Alan Goodman still has it. Really great. I've got the original parts to build myself a replacement, but the cobbler's children have no shoes..... |
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Post by wiz on Jan 9, 2019 18:02:41 GMT -6
Cool.. fast release
cheers
Wiz
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Post by Guitar on Jan 12, 2019 14:55:26 GMT -6
lovely!
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Post by dreamsambas on Jan 17, 2019 10:49:52 GMT -6
Man- Doug, that sounds so good. I know these old limiters were mainly used for broadcast. Did they find their ways to studios too back in the day?
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Post by EmRR on Jan 17, 2019 11:50:48 GMT -6
Man- Doug, that sounds so good. I know these old limiters were mainly used for broadcast. Did they find their ways to studios too back in the day? Mostly not. Collins/Gates/etc stayed pretty strictly in the broadcast world. Both had recording chains in their catalogs, but meant for broadcast archiving and time-shifting. Collins audio was pre-WWII legacy, most of their post-war business was aerospace/military. Because Art Collins stared in broadcast he kept the HAM and broadcast lines going, and by all accounts they always lost money on that stuff because they were so overbuilt. I'm pretty well convinced practically no one ever had Collins of Gates stuff in recording studios until the 80's or 90's when they became cheap curiosities. Jimmy Page dragged RCA BA-6's/86's/96's around to studios thereby popularizing those early on. RCA did have film and recording studio presence, but mostly in totally different product lines we rarely see, what we see more commonly is the broadcast stuff. All very similar, many shared circuit concepts, but different packages. Altec marketed to both with heavy presences in both places. UA was a small player that mainly marketed to studios but also to broadcast, hence they are more known now with greatly inflated awareness compared to their actual overall market penetration across all fields. |
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Post by dreamsambas on Jan 17, 2019 13:46:02 GMT -6
That's great information. Very insightful.
The sound of the track you posted- when the heavy limiting kicks in- just sounds so.. period accurate. Made me wonder if maybe some smaller, more podunk studios in the 50s-60s might have relied on limiters like these for safety before hitting tape.
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Post by EmRR on Jan 17, 2019 15:39:18 GMT -6
That's great information. Very insightful. The sound of the track you posted- when the heavy limiting kicks in- just sounds so.. period accurate. Made me wonder if maybe some smaller, more podunk studios in the 50s-60s might have relied on limiters like these for safety before hitting tape. I believe these cost more than the UA stuff and Altecs like the 436. A 26W was $545 in 1954, inflation adjusts to $5051 today. You could get a Fairchild for same or less. They may have used them if they got them used. Look to Sam Phillips having a used RCA 76 he got, IIRC, from a station he worked at. Another example: the reason Pultecs took over was they were the Behringer KT of their day, far cheaper than the Langevin/Cinema/etc EQ's studios had been using. Not because they were 'better', they were more bang for buck. |
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Post by dreamsambas on Jan 17, 2019 16:37:13 GMT -6
Man, that is awesome. I did not know that about Pultecs. Doug, this is Lucas by the way. Love those Collins 356a pres I got from you!
I'm curious - when did studios begin processing individual tracks, and not just the mix bus? I'd imagine the consoles of the 1950s didn't have sends/returns.
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Post by EmRR on Jan 17, 2019 17:11:19 GMT -6
Oh, hey Lucas! Didn't realize it was you.
Film world was processing individual tracks in the 1930's. There are 1940's broadcast consoles that have breakable patch points in the wiring such that you could bring out send/return points to a patchbay for processing, small places probably never did and the larger a facility was the more likely they did. Custom recording consoles would have also had patch points going back into the 1930's, whether they treated like we might now is a different question. A lot of the film patching would have been dialog EQ's, basically variable HP/LP and presence filters. My early '50's RCA BC-2B has send/return patching, the 76 before it and the BC-3/5/6 after it did not. My Gates SA-40 has patching points too, but my Collins 212A does not. The 1961 Altec 250SU and later 250T3 both have patch points, the T3 having a built in HPF option on the bus with a reference to replacing it with a 9061A for greater control. The nearly identical later 50's Collins and GE consoles had a plug-in compressor option that's pretty much a Stalevel, it would replace the standard program amp. In a 2 bus console you could always process one path with compression and bring it back in the console to remix with the other bus. Whether anyone ever thought that way, I can't say.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jan 17, 2019 19:16:27 GMT -6
Man- Doug, that sounds so good. I know these old limiters were mainly used for broadcast. Did they find their ways to studios too back in the day? Mostly not. Collins/Gates/etc stayed pretty strictly in the broadcast world. Both had recording chains in their catalogs, but meant for broadcast archiving and time-shifting. Collins audio was pre-WWII legacy, most of their post-war business was aerospace/military. Because Art Collins stared in broadcast he kept the HAM and broadcast lines going, and by all accounts they always lost money on that stuff because they were so overbuilt. I'm pretty well convinced practically no one ever had Collins of Gates stuff in recording studios until the 80's or 90's when they became cheap curiosities. Jimmy Page dragged RCA BA-6's/86's/96's around to studios thereby popularizing those early on. RCA did have film and recording studio presence, but mostly in totally different product lines we rarely see, what we see more commonly is the broadcast stuff. All very similar, many shared circuit concepts, but different packages. Altec marketed to both with heavy presences in both places. UA was a small player that mainly marketed to studios but also to broadcast, hence they are more known now with greatly inflated awareness compared to their actual overall market penetration across all fields. Urei didn’t really migrate out of the studio till Harmon/ JBL bought them. Even the few that you might find that are pre Harmon outside the studio are for the most part Solidstate and of the Classic UA Comps the ones most often found in Broadcast air chains are LA4’s. I have seen some LA2’s in the racks of broadcasters “recording rooms” but maybe 2 at the most in air chains. I have also seen many a LA4 in an old large church PA rack. |
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Post by EmRR on Jan 17, 2019 20:15:04 GMT -6
The UREI Mod One broadcast consoles look to be 1973.
I had an old broadcast guy near me curse the Collins 26U he'd run at one time because it wasn't 'as good at flatlining the signal' as the LA-2A's in the major market station transmitter chain down the road.
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Post by dreamsambas on Jan 17, 2019 22:42:42 GMT -6
Oh, hey Lucas! Didn't realize it was you. Film world was processing individual tracks in the 1930's. There are 1940's broadcast consoles that have breakable patch points in the wiring such that you could bring out send/return points to a patchbay for processing, small places probably never did and the larger a facility was the more likely they did. Custom recording consoles would have also had patch points going back into the 1930's, whether they treated like we might now is a different question. A lot of the film patching would have been dialog EQ's, basically variable HP/LP and presence filters. Interesting! Are there any pictures out there of those pre-mid-century consoles? Recently came upon this photo of a custom console at Gold Star with what looks like a Sta Level in the rack.  |
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Post by EmRR on Jan 17, 2019 23:08:48 GMT -6
That sure does look like a Stalevel. Don't think I've seen that Gold Star picture.
Columbia used BA-6's on the busses. RCA Nashville used RCA Photophone comps for bus amps, but apparently didn't use the compression.
Look at the RCA Recording Manual download that's out there. There's pictures of various installs based off the same RCA plan in the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Some system flow charts there too. Most of the broadcast consoles of that era were control boxes with all the amps in outboard racks, and on patch bays, so patchable by design. The Collins 12H may be the first full service console to put the amps inside. Look at Communications magazine from the late 1930's to see some of those.
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