motown switch

[birt]

i've read that motown records always have the bass and guitar plugged straight into the mixing desk. since mixing desks were tube based back then i was looking for schematics of those to see what made these instruments sound the way they did. it probably had something to do with impedances or so i guess. the reason i'm trying to find out is that it if it has a big impact on the sound of your instrument it might be a cool feature on a guitar or bassamp. a switch to emulate the input of those old mixing desks.

[bigdaddy]

From what I understand they used a B-15 for bass. having 3 guitar players maybe they did go direct but I doubt it. Probably used a fender amp of some kind. But they might have had only 2 mics in the room and adjusted everybody individually by the sum of the sounds.

Those days they mostly used only 2 tracks and bounced them. You can learn a lot watching the movie Ray and the documentary movie about Tom Dowd. http://www.thelanguageofmusic.com/synop.htm

The Beatles production become more and more amazing when you think about what they did with what they had, 4 tracks maybe. Now, you in your home studio do so much compared to them.

The funny thing about it all is that with all the new technology music stinks now more than ever.

Also when you want to sound like your favorite recording guy you have to take into consideration that's probably not how he sounds live. Years ago it was recorded with a great tube amp, into a great tube microphone, into a great tube board, into a great tube compressor and onto vinyl were so much was actually lost fidelity wise. Even the later solid state stuff was very warm sounding. I have a SOLO 610 and Great River SS preamp waiting for me to record with in my bedroom studio, I hope I can return to it.

[G._Hoffman]

According to a friend who engineered there, they did indeed go direct, but I would go quite so far as to say it was straight into the board.  They had a box they would plug the three guitars and Jamerson's bass into.  Each instrument had a fairly basic preamp, and a level control.  There were no tone controls, though of course they had some of that in the board.  However, from the guitar box, it went to a power amp and a speaker cabinet (one speaker for all four guys!) so the rest of the band could hear them.  This was important, because they never used headphones, but just played with what they could hear in the room.  this, of course, brings up another important point, which is that the Snake Pit was a really small room (particularly for the size of the band!), so the guitar and bass was certainly bleeding into the drum, keyboard, and percussion mics.  Vocals and horns were cut separately.

This is all in reference to the earlier years, when they were still using all the old tube gear and great old mics.  At some point, when they moved to 8 track machines, they replaced all the tube gear with transistor stuff, replaced all the old mics, and made (according to my friend) the engineer's lives much more difficult.  I'm not sure how they were recording guitars at that point, but it was only the last few years in Detroit where that was happening.

Honestly, though, the gear didn't matter much.  The sound came from those guys, and their hands.  Jamerson didn't change the strings on his bass.  EVER.  By the end of his life, it became a real problem, because 30 year old strings just won't play in tune (go figure).  But that sound came from Jamerson, not the bass.  Its the same with all of those guys.  Its not the gear, its the guy.  But if you want to reproduce the signal chain, its really just a very clean signal path.  There wasn't much dirt on the guitars there (although, for many years they did have a dirt floor in the studio!)


Gabriel

[HotBluePlates]

If you look up schematics for any old Altec, RCA or Universal Audio (UREI) mic or line preamp, you will find something that looks essentially like 2 stages of a guitar preamp. There might be a volume control, there might be a feedback loop. But essentially, there's nothing special to the circuit.

Oh sure, the operating points are chosen with care and the cathode and plate load resistors are a byproduct of looking for clean reproduction (within practical and cost limits). But the only stuff likely to catch your eye as unusual are the added bells and whistles of later preamps: phantom power, EQ, switchable pads, switchable input impedance, maybe hi and low gain ranges by adding a gain stage or altering a feedback loop.

[Rev D]

 Agreed on Jamerson, he was the man and yeah he never changed strings, I heard once somebody did and he was pretty pissed about it. He wanted that dull kinda thud sound, I'm not sure if it was on all tracks, but he also had a piece of rubber in the ashtray bridge cover almost like a palm mute but on all the time (like on those early guitars with the string mute switch). However he did it, he sure did it well, probably one of the most inventive and talented bass players of all time especially to pull off the speed he did using one finger to pick with.

Regards,

D.

[bigdaddy]

I mention the SOLO 610 because that is one channel of a Putnam mixing board which they probably used on the Motown stuff. Every big studio had a Putnam. The Great River is one channel of the Neve board used in all the great British recordings from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin. When the neve came here everybody went SS and I think the board used by the Beach Boys was the same one used on the first Van Halen Album.

I used the SOLO 610 on 2 recordings I did in my bedroom into a VS2400 Roland and the sound is really good. If you want to reproduce that sound buy a SOLO 610 and run it into a very clean guitar amp like a twin reverb or PV even one of those old Roland 120s.

I say that to a lot of bass players when they talked about their rigs. I would always say buy a good tube mic pre then go into a stereo EQ, then a stereo compressor then into a stereo power amp, then into a 2-10 cab and a 1-15 or 18 cab. If you wanted to really get crazy you can use a Xover before the compressor. Not many bass players would spend that kind of money nor would they know how to work all those dials and faders......LOL.

Honestly if you want that sound live the best amp you can get is a BF Twin Reverb with JBL D131F/D120 or a dual Showman type amp with a similar pair of 12s or a big 15 like a D/K-130 or 140. Or something similar will do it. Sub out one of the 12AX7s for a tube with less gain and use the SOLO 610 or similar preamp.

[FYL]

The funny thing about it all is that with all the new technology music stinks now more than ever.

There's a missing ingredient in most commercial recordings: talent.

[bigdaddy]

I agree to a certain level. But I don't think it's talent as much as creativity and the music companies allowing truly creative people to be so. It's as though they want to make a couple of million bucks right off the bat without investing too much time and money. Instant turnover, one hit wonders, teenybopper stars and bubble gum dreams.

No room for real musicians and creative people with music coming from their souls not their wallets.

Even Nashville with all those excellent musicians has always had their method of making stars. Like the old movie studios.

I was watching American Idol and Simon told one performer(a guy from Texas, DFW area who sounded a lot like Bob Segar)) you sound like so many other, even hundreds of people who are playing in bars, you're nothing special. He missed the point, there are hundreds of musicians playing in bars that are special and should be major recording acts. He had it backward. You don't have to be a star to make good music and stars don't necessarily make good music. Those barroom players are some of the best in the world but have no chance of ever getting major radio and TV air time to promote their music and develop it.

[birt]

interesting, it seems that their live sound (indeed the B-15, i knew that) is a lot closer to the studio setup than i thought. i did backline for the temptations 2 years ago and they were using an ampeg SVT and silverface twin reverb amps. seems like not much has changed :)

[Shrapnel]

The funny thing about it all is that with all the new technology music stinks now more than ever.

There's a missing ingredient in most commercial recordings: talent.

Sadly, gone are the days, with most labels, that they really listened to sound and quality to make a decision on who to sign.

They currently, in the name of profits, greedily sign up any and all bands/musicians that sounds like their current cash cow, until everyone grows bored with that particular mediocre and moves on to the next. (Then they cut 'em loose.)

[G._Hoffman]

Agreed on Jamerson, he was the man and yeah he never changed strings, I heard once somebody did and he was pretty pissed about it. He wanted that dull kinda thud sound, I'm not sure if it was on all tracks, but he also had a piece of rubber in the ashtray bridge cover almost like a palm mute but on all the time (like on those early guitars with the string mute switch). However he did it, he sure did it well, probably one of the most inventive and talented bass players of all time especially to pull off the speed he did using one finger to pick with.

Regards,

D.

Both Jamerson and Babbit used a wet sponge, frequently, but it was a song by song thing, depending on what they were after.  They would also move the sponge around, change how wet it was, etc.  My friend once told me the first two bass players he ever worked with were Jamerson and Babbit.  He was very confused the first time he did a non-Motown session!  He just thought that was how it was done.  He also had the single best work related story ever - when asked his favorite memory from his career, he said that it would have to be having 5 songs he worked on in the Billboard top 10, and the other five were all by the Beatles!

I'm not sure, but I think the original Motown console was made in house, which was pretty common back then.  Still, as HPB says, the basic idea is pretty much the same as a guitar amp, just tweaked a bit. 


Gabriel

[nastyoldtech]

My $.02 is there's a lot more to the sonic landscape in a sound recording that just a preamp. Too many variables like microphones, outboard effects like EQ, compression, reverbs, etc.. Not to mention the mix, mastering process and how you perceive it on your own home listening device.

That said I would tweak a tone network of some sort and spend less time on worrying about exact details. One of the original engineers is still alive and frequents some of the usual recording haunts on the web you might be able to ask him for specific details?

[bluesbear]

I'm sure they did things many different ways over the years. I've seen pictures from the early '60's of a blonde Bandmaster piggyback in that studio.
Dave