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Re: [ARSCLIST] Les Paul (second try)
After making ten successful sound on sound passes, a mistake during the
eleventh pass would effectively erase all ten previous passes, and it
must have
occurred to Les that a way to avoid this disaster would be to make a
safety
dub of the tenth pass.
But how could he make a dub if he had only one tape recorder? He
could have
made a disc dub, since he had a lathe. Or, he could have taken his
tapes to
Capitol to have dubs made. But presumably he did neither. I sure would
like to ask him about this.
It is interesting to me that after he got the eight-track (octopus)
from Ampex,
he never again (in my opinion) made the kind of brilliant recordings
which he'd
made with his modified mono deck. (Like the centipede which, asked
how it
could coordinate the motion of all those legs, could never walk
thereafter?)
As for tape delay, check out his brilliant "I'm Forever Blowing
Bubbles", where
the repetition rate of the delay fits perfectly the tempo of that song.
Doug Pomeroy
POMEROY AUDIO
Audio Restoration & Mastering Services
193 Baltic St
Brooklyn, NY 11201-6173
(718) 855-2650
pomeroyaudio@xxxxxxx
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Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:03:51 -0400
From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Les Paul (was: New online publication: Manual of
analogue audio restoration techniques, by Peter Copeland)
At 04:26 PM 2008-09-18, Michael Biel wrote:
Yesterday I had a chance to look thru the bio of Les Paul by Mary
Alice Shaughnessy.
...
Thanks for the great post. Yes, I think we all agree that the PER(P)
head arrangement was a horrid trap used as described, but I do think
we have confirmation he did it at least for a while. In fact, this
one-shot overdubbing scheme is news as very few people would have the
courage to try it.
I recall my audio/photography mentor telling me about this in the
1960s and likening it to his tricolour carbon prints where at the
last minute the entire image could wash off the base and go down the
drain after hours of work.
Sel-Sync seems to be the hold-up, but I would need to take some time
to pull out the catalogs to see how early this shows up.
The oral histories here
http://recordist.com/ampex/mp3/index.html
might be of some use.
Unfortunately, Ross Snyder passed on in January of this year. There
is little doubt that it was Ross who came up with the design and name
SelSync. At the time, Ampex didn't see the need to patent it.
Cheers,
Richard