W
wado1942
New member
Getting a 60s sound is mostly about the instruments, the room and the mics. I used to have an 80-8 and got a very modern sound out of it even without noise reduction (which I used only maybe 10% of the time).
Don't ever use Dolby A. It was a bad system even when it was invented which is why most studios that bought them threw them in the trash after a few months. I'm willing to bet most mid-60s tape recorders had less noise than a mid 70s recorder anyways, particularly comparing a 1" or 1/2" 4-track to a 1/2" 8-track. But if you want to hush the noise a bit, DBX is about all I'd be willing to use next to Dolby SR (good luck finding a set cheap enough though). Anyways, when I used DBX, I regularly saturated the tape, especially on drums. You'd find that when you saturate the tape a little with DBX, it won't fully decode the signal so you get a little bit of compression from it which can be nice in moderation.
Regardless, the 60s recordings sound the way they do because they used huge, very nice sounding rooms filled with 60s instruments and amps. And think again about grabing a DI or even turning on the EQ. They had EQ but it was pretty limited. They used VERY expensive microphones and vacuum tube preamps (real tube preamps, not like ART or Behringer) which yielded extremely clean sound. They also hand a tendancy to use what EQ they had to boost the high end a little as a form of emphasis which helped hide noise. The mastering engineer of course would correct this emphasis on his end. Consequently, the high end would have a tendancy to saturate. They had really really crappy monitors in those days and didn't know much about setting up said monitors so in the words of Pete Townshend, you had to get the sound right in the room and just trust the equipment not to ruin the sound. I'll repeat that, get the sound you want before you even think about putting up mics. Then use the absolute best mics you can find to try and capture that sound to tape without degrading it.
You'd have no idea how clean most of those recordings from the 60s were before they went through all the bouncing etc. An aquaintance of mine who was a mastering engineer in Mowtown said most projects were on their 8th generation before he got them. This means the end user had an 11th GENERATION COPY!!! That much bouncing & copying by nature limits the dynamic range. By the early 70s, 16-tracks were pretty well standard so you didn't have nearly as much bouncing and the sound got much cleaner even though they still weren't using noise reduction and the tracks tended to be much narrower. Actually, what was left of Mowtown usually had a PAIR of 16-tracks, one for the instruments and one for the vocals. They were synchronised manually by a deticated tape operater. This way, the end user had a mere 5th generation. Regardless, the dirty old 60s sound happened largely as a side effect of ping-ponging tracks to get more layers of instruments/vocals. There was also a tendancy for a while to keep the levels pegged at the top which was largely started by Joe Meek and Phil Spectre in order to get a "bigger" sound.
Long story short, don't worry too much about what type of tape machine you use. 1/2" 8-tracks with the exception of the 70-8 and the TSR-8 are all pretty good sounding machines. I think the 80-8 is more rugged and reliable. I was the 3rd owner of mine and it served me very well until I sold it and UPS destroyed it. As for being AC, all 1/2" 8-tracks are AC. If you're referring to the capstan motor, that's AC too. I've never had pitch problems in the 6 years I had my 80-8. If the motor is in good shape, it will be dead locked to the 60Hz comming from the outlet in your house. The power company is required to be phase locked down to .1 degrees so the source of electricity won't cause pitch problems either unless you're running on an external generator. Now if you're using crappy tape from the late 70s-mid 80s, the tape can stick to guides and slow things that way. But use new tape, for a machine that old, use RMGI 911 and you'll be fine. But stay analogue as long as you can. Track analogue, mix analogue, master analogue if you can. Stay away from digital reverbs. I built a 3'x5' plate out of crap I found on construction sites, a speaker a friend gave me and a couple of contact mics. If you're not that adventurous, use your record room for reverb. Don't rely on technology to get your sound, rather, use intuition and ingenuity and you'll get a more classic sound.
As for alignment tapes, RMGI has nothing to do with them. Get them directly from the manufacturer at http://home.flash.net/~mrltapes/
Proper alginment tapes are literally made one at a time by a team of human beings. They use custom built tape machines that are cleaned, degaussed and aligned before each use. The engineer speaks to you live from a booth with a high quality analogue tone generator sitting right next to him. Consequently, they are very expensive. I bought a 1/4" IEC tape from MRL recently. It's 6 minutes long and cost something like $120.
Don't ever use Dolby A. It was a bad system even when it was invented which is why most studios that bought them threw them in the trash after a few months. I'm willing to bet most mid-60s tape recorders had less noise than a mid 70s recorder anyways, particularly comparing a 1" or 1/2" 4-track to a 1/2" 8-track. But if you want to hush the noise a bit, DBX is about all I'd be willing to use next to Dolby SR (good luck finding a set cheap enough though). Anyways, when I used DBX, I regularly saturated the tape, especially on drums. You'd find that when you saturate the tape a little with DBX, it won't fully decode the signal so you get a little bit of compression from it which can be nice in moderation.
Regardless, the 60s recordings sound the way they do because they used huge, very nice sounding rooms filled with 60s instruments and amps. And think again about grabing a DI or even turning on the EQ. They had EQ but it was pretty limited. They used VERY expensive microphones and vacuum tube preamps (real tube preamps, not like ART or Behringer) which yielded extremely clean sound. They also hand a tendancy to use what EQ they had to boost the high end a little as a form of emphasis which helped hide noise. The mastering engineer of course would correct this emphasis on his end. Consequently, the high end would have a tendancy to saturate. They had really really crappy monitors in those days and didn't know much about setting up said monitors so in the words of Pete Townshend, you had to get the sound right in the room and just trust the equipment not to ruin the sound. I'll repeat that, get the sound you want before you even think about putting up mics. Then use the absolute best mics you can find to try and capture that sound to tape without degrading it.
You'd have no idea how clean most of those recordings from the 60s were before they went through all the bouncing etc. An aquaintance of mine who was a mastering engineer in Mowtown said most projects were on their 8th generation before he got them. This means the end user had an 11th GENERATION COPY!!! That much bouncing & copying by nature limits the dynamic range. By the early 70s, 16-tracks were pretty well standard so you didn't have nearly as much bouncing and the sound got much cleaner even though they still weren't using noise reduction and the tracks tended to be much narrower. Actually, what was left of Mowtown usually had a PAIR of 16-tracks, one for the instruments and one for the vocals. They were synchronised manually by a deticated tape operater. This way, the end user had a mere 5th generation. Regardless, the dirty old 60s sound happened largely as a side effect of ping-ponging tracks to get more layers of instruments/vocals. There was also a tendancy for a while to keep the levels pegged at the top which was largely started by Joe Meek and Phil Spectre in order to get a "bigger" sound.
Long story short, don't worry too much about what type of tape machine you use. 1/2" 8-tracks with the exception of the 70-8 and the TSR-8 are all pretty good sounding machines. I think the 80-8 is more rugged and reliable. I was the 3rd owner of mine and it served me very well until I sold it and UPS destroyed it. As for being AC, all 1/2" 8-tracks are AC. If you're referring to the capstan motor, that's AC too. I've never had pitch problems in the 6 years I had my 80-8. If the motor is in good shape, it will be dead locked to the 60Hz comming from the outlet in your house. The power company is required to be phase locked down to .1 degrees so the source of electricity won't cause pitch problems either unless you're running on an external generator. Now if you're using crappy tape from the late 70s-mid 80s, the tape can stick to guides and slow things that way. But use new tape, for a machine that old, use RMGI 911 and you'll be fine. But stay analogue as long as you can. Track analogue, mix analogue, master analogue if you can. Stay away from digital reverbs. I built a 3'x5' plate out of crap I found on construction sites, a speaker a friend gave me and a couple of contact mics. If you're not that adventurous, use your record room for reverb. Don't rely on technology to get your sound, rather, use intuition and ingenuity and you'll get a more classic sound.
As for alignment tapes, RMGI has nothing to do with them. Get them directly from the manufacturer at http://home.flash.net/~mrltapes/
Proper alginment tapes are literally made one at a time by a team of human beings. They use custom built tape machines that are cleaned, degaussed and aligned before each use. The engineer speaks to you live from a booth with a high quality analogue tone generator sitting right next to him. Consequently, they are very expensive. I bought a 1/4" IEC tape from MRL recently. It's 6 minutes long and cost something like $120.
The heads for the 80-8 and 38 are still available new from Tascam, but the 80-8 heads are much more expensive.
