[78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

[martha]

 I don't think that a few volts up or down would audibly affect the 
amplifier during a recording,  but for at least the earliest years of 
electrical recording, they used batteries to power the amps.  The new 
cutters were specifically made to fit existing lathes, too (see the article 
I uploaded, a while back)


----- Original Message ----- >
> 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.