[78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

[Michael Shoshani]

On Fri, 2010-01-22 at 14:23 -0500, Ron L'Herault wrote:
> I imagine some of the acoustical components could have been adapted to the
> electrical process.  If they had an electrically powered cutting lathe, all
> one would need to do would be to put on the electrical cutting head in place
> of the acoustic one, right?

If. Power line fluctuations apparently made turntable speeds erratic in
some places. In his book "All You Need Is Ears", George Martin writes
that when he began working at Abbey Road in 1950 (might have been 1952,
but I believe it was 1950), they *had* tape machines but didn't quite
trust them yet. Master recordings were done on a lathe whose turntable
was powered by a falling-weight gravity-driven motor, because the
electrical current was not reliable enough to guarantee a wow- and
flutter-free record.

Why the current was reliable enough to power the cutting head, the
amplifier, the mixer and the microphones (and, indeed, those distrusted
tape machines) but not the turntable itself is not explained.

Michael Shoshani