nasty vinyl

You may have an excellent point Ian Just a case of priorities I guess

Oh and I may have to withdraw all the comments I've made in this thread. I had a look back and my copies of Rolling Stones and Out of Our Heads are not, repeat NOT originals - I'd always thought they were but haven't listened to them for years on my proper setup (cos they sounded shite) and had been relegated to the dansette section upstairs. I checked them last night and they are definitely reissues - they don't actually sound as bad as I remembered either , though still not good.

Tony - isn't the diff between the blue and red labels deccas mono or stereo? With you on the Y&B Beatles pressings - so long as you have a beefy bank balance - and can find one which isn't shagged (happens sometimes - I found a Y&B Rubber Soul in a record shop in Nottingham a few months back for £3 - the sleeve was okay and it even looked okay, but I thought - nah gotta be something wrong with it - grooves ripped up or something, but it was a minter - bargains do happen - fantastic sound too).

 

Hi Dom,

Neither.

You have forgotton about another big wig in music. Phil Spector.
He produced the first record that used phasing. A tune called "The Big Hurt" by Toni Fisher in the late 50s.

The first British record to use Phasing was The Small faces tune.

There were plenty before the Beatles who helped set the tone.
Phil Spector & Joe Meek are just two who did before. And there are loads of others who have done afterwards.

The engineers who worked for EMI did produce alot of techniques such as flanging. I understand the term was invented to use in explaining the technique to John Lennon. Ken Townshend is the bloke you need to thank.

http://www.mikekonopka.com/page21.html

SCIDB

 

Nope, I didn't even know that. I've never been much of a fan of the Spector sound to be honest, and the fact he's now been unmasked as a bit of a "loon with a gun" makes him even less appealing to me. I'm glad the Beatles reissue of Let it be has had his hamfisted treatment removed - much better to listen to without all those cheesy strings...

Still, that said, fair play to him if he invented phasing that far back - it must have cost a fortune using multiple tape machines in the 50s!

 

Better Hmmmmm. Now I'm the first guy to say that I think the Beatles were the best band ... ever ... full stop BUT remember I asked about the new Let it Be a few months back and the consensus was to give it a whirl? Well I borrowed it and in my considered opinion its still shoddy rubbish - shoddy rubbish without toffee sauce on top admittedly, but shoddy rubbish all the same.

 

Hi,

No. He just two normal tape machines.

Here's a quote I found.


Phil Spectre was producing a record and wanted to thicken up the vocals. He played back two copies of a vocal track at the same time and touched the flange of the tape reel to delay one a bit. The resulting sound was not just reverb-ed or thickened, it displayed the same comb-filter response, plus something a bit more exciting. Since the thumb on the flange of the tape reel was not perfectly constant, the delay varied a bit between the two signals. If you think about the description of time delays above, you'll see that the changing delay has the effect of moving the frequency notches up and down in frequency. This is NOT a subtle effect, and Phil was so enthralled with it that he went on to use it in most of his songs - the first "flanged/Phased" sound was "The Big Hurt." It was not the last.


SCIDB

 

THAT'S how the name "flanging" came about!!! Always wandered that...

Hang on though - surely he needed THREE machines - two for playback and one for record? Or did he "bounce" across from one track to another using the one machine, while mixing in the second?