[78-L] First LP

[Royal Pemberton]

Much of that content about Wallerstein came from an article he wrote,
published in HIGH FIDELITY magazine's 25th anniversary issue (April 1976)
called 'Creating the LP Record (as told to Ward Botsford)'.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 6:54 AM, Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com> wrote:

> From: DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
> > I thought the process actually went in the other direction - that
> throughout
> > the '40s, Columbia, in anticipation of their forthcoming Lp, was
> recording
> > their classical materials to large lacquers on which they could record
> > entire movements without stopping, then dubbing these with the necessary
> > cuts to produce the 78 releases. When the Lp was finally introduced,
> > they could be dubbed in their entirety onto the Lp master.  db
>
> They never thought to record a long piece straight through because the
> only thing they were selling were the 78s and there was no assurance
> there ever would be an LP.  The 16-inch masters were recorded in chunks
> the length of the 78 sides for easy dubbing onto the 78 masters.
>
> There is a page on the web quoting Wallerstein saying that these
> lacquers "gave Columbia a tremendous advantage overits competitors, who,
> when LP finally appeared, were forced tomake copies from their old,
> noisy shellac records for any materialpredating tape. RCA issued many of
> these old records with wordsof apology for their poor quality printed on
> the jackets."  BALONEY.  They dubbed them from vinyl pressings, you dumb
> ass.  The note about quality concerned the sound of the recording in the
> pre hi-fi days, not surface noise.
>
> >> A lot of those early numbers were experimental..don't forget,
> >> they didn't have tape yet in 1948 and everything had to be
> >> dubbed from original lacquers with the side joins and
> >> overlaps done in real time!  dl
>
> He also said that 40% of the original June 48 release was from tape
> masters because they had been using it since 1947.  WRONG. "Columbia
> also had an advantage in that we were the first people in the U.S. to
> use tape for master recording. Murphy was one of the first to see a
> German Magnetophon tape recorder in newly liberated Luxemburg after the
> war. He quickly packed it up and shipped it back to CBS. Not long
> thereafter both EMI and Ampex came out with machines, and we immediately
> placed an order for both. By mid-1947, we were using them and had
> discontinued direct disc cutting. The Ampex proved to be the better
> machine, so we sent the EMI machines back. Of the originally issued LPs
> about 40% were from tape originals."
>
> http://www.musicinthemail.com/audiohistoryLP.html
>
> IDIOT!  The first recording to be mastered on tape, along side of disc,
> supposedly, is South Pacific in 1949.  And they used the disc masters.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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