The Sorry Tale Of Nostalgia versus Reality

[Junk Box Nick]

Everything in broadcasting is now digital so somewhere along the line digital versions of old recordings have been made. I don't have a huge collection but the majority of my singles are 60s or early 70s releases and some hits from that time I know to the last beat. More than a few times I have noticed that the track played on the radio today is a different cut/mix from the original release. I have a few CD compilations (from the recognised label, not cheapos) and have noticed the same phenomenon.

I have a number of Tamla Motown 45s and they sound very good (to my ears) when played on my small period Philips player. It isn't hi-fi but it's fun and enjoyable - and that's what counts with me.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

I have a number of Tamla Motown 45s and they sound very good (to my ears) when played on my small period Philips player. It isn't hi-fi but it's fun and enjoyable - and that's what counts with me.

That's the sort of reproducer that 60s-era Motown was engineered to be played through!

[the typical 1960s transistor-radio or record-player used a Class-B push-pull output stage. At low volume-levels and when the battery was getting tired they suffered with nasty ear-grating 'crossover' distortion - noticeable most at low volume levels. So the recording engineers arranged for there to be no low-volume parts in the music - while at the same time restricting the upper-volume end so it didn't drive the limited-power-ability transistors of the time into msaturation/clipping]

[Radio Wrangler]

Tamla Motown and all that era also came over very well on huge 15 inch speakers powered by El34s amplifiers on fairground waltzers.... and juke boxes (Usually 6L6s).... all somewhat different to Dansettes. Pop music was still allowed to have some dynamic range back then.

David

[sp10mk11]

about 1971/2 I was taken to Ilford Palais on a Saturday afternoon by my elder sister and her friends..............it blew my mind, majority of the music was tamla and soul/funk, the dj had a console with two BSR decks with ceramic cartidges and just two large speakers one at each end of the stage they each had two 12" drivers.

I am not so sure that all records were made without quiet parts back then as there were an awful lot of ballads about then aswell

It was brilliant then all this powerful sounding music just played constantly, no mixing as such but no dj yabering between records either.

Hence all these years later my making up some Tamla tapes.

I too have a tiny Philips record player, speaker in lid 3 speed deck and that sounds great with old singles on it.

Oh yes fair ground systems back in the day were awesome, to here the latest or your favourite record blasted out from unknown but ****** loud system was great with all the machinery around.

Arghh nostalga over load here

Happy days

[Herald1360]

The best sounding disco I ever heard was a guy running about 30WPC from p-p KT66 valve amps into fairly massive home brewed horn loaded speakers. Source was vinyl 45s but the console was twin 301s or 401s (forgettery in action here) with SMEs and mag carts.

Not only did the sound level blow your head off, but it did it cleanly unlike most of the SP25 ceramic cart and 100W plus tranny amps typical of the time- early mid '70s.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Tamla Motown and all that era also came over very well on huge 15 inch speakers powered by El34s amplifiers on fairground waltzers....

In the 1970s I built a few amps for the showman community: the problems were that the power-supply was really-ripply 380VDC from the same Diesel generator that powered the ride motors, the ride-operators instinctively turned the amps up to '11', and they could get unfriendly if your amp failed.
My standard "250-watt" amp used six PL519s in Class-B push-pull-parallel - these had the advantage that they were designed to handle high peak currents at relatively low anode voltage. Six 40-volt heaters wired in series allowed me to get away with a relatively low amount of waste heat in the dropper resistor. It was interesting to see the 1-amp anode-current meter regularly bashing against the end-stop for hours on end.

1960s Motown through these amps sounded really good, so did The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun", anything by The Who [always popular after dark during bank-holidays on the South Coast] and - my favourite - Arthur Brown's "Fire".

[Radio Wrangler]

A local disco firm toured most of northern England and a bit further afield. Dad's business kept their Escort vans going, and their office space in town was rented from Mat Matthias, he of Matamp and Orange fame. Mat built turntable consoles for them (SP25 with magnetic cartridges I think a Shure broadcast model) and supplied them with his usual 100W and 200W EL34 amps along with his speaker cabinets. They had quite a decent sound, and a thriving business. Trev's Discos.

David

[ms660]

Me and an old friend did mobile disco in the 60's, we built all our own stuff, originally mono, the amp was a 30 watt job using 807's and was based on the PW Guitar Amp from around'64/'65, later I built another one the same so we had stereo for some of the LP tracks, we built the deck consol ourselves, it had two SP25's and a homebrew preamp and cueing circuit, to cue the records we used to slip them on the paper record covers, reversing the direction of the record by about a revolution or so from the actual start of the track to give the record cover "clutch" time to spin up to speed.

We built our own speaker cabinets, each one had a couple of Fane's in them, can't remember the speaker size, maybe 12 or 15 inch, a couple of tweeters were thrown in as well, I built the light boxes myself, the usual trick back then was to to have 3 different coloured bulbs in each unit fed via seperate audio filters and a triac driver to power the bulbs so they all flashed with the music etc, the bulbs were 150 watt jobs if I remember correctly, they were made by Creselco, later on we added a polarized light unit and some strobes, we were both TV Field service engineers so we used to use the firms estate cars for lugging the stuff around.

Later on we upgraded the speaker system and the main amps, I traveled down from Manchester to the Hammersmith Odeon to see Ike and Tina Turner, somewhere on Utube there's a brief shot of me in the audience someone filmed the concert. While I was down there I picked up a couple of solid state 50 watt PA modules from Henry's Radio to upgrade the mobile disco, the 807 jobbies were kept for emergency standby.

Almost all the records we played were Motown, Stax, Atlantic, Stateside etc.....Still got most of them, covered in beer stains and scratches, they still sound good to me though.

Happy days.

Lawrence.

[Radio Wrangler]

I remember the sound of turntables slowing when ride motors there started and a big Gardners engine strained on the back of a lorry, the lights dimmed and the sound level dropped a bit.

All part of the experience!

My opinion of fairground power supplies was formed one year at Canker Lane Huddersfield when a dog cocked his leg on a very disreputable rubber cable and did a vertical take-off. He landed like a sack of sand, dead. As a youngster, I found this rather distressing. As an electrically savvy youngster I made sure my family knew never to tread on one of the cables which snaked around fairgrounds and never ever in a puddle that one crossed.

PL519's seem perfect for the job. I did a direct-coupled 100Watter with them.

David