[78-L] fake stereo

[Michael Shoshani]

--- On Sat, 12/10/11, Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com> wrote:

>
>
> They were the very first drilled cheap CDs I ever saw so I
> bought them
> as historic relics.  They were pure perfect MONO,
> recorded from some
> good condition early work tapes made at the time the
> masters were new
> and in good condition.  Then I heard the mono
> replacements and found
> that they had been played incorrectly from badly warped
> acetate original
> studio tapes with the highs swishing in and out.  
> 

According to "Goldmine" at the time these were coming out (late 1980s), Gregg Geller orchestrated this restoration by finding the copy masters used for the 45 RPM singles, which were still in print.  The story at the time was that whatever process they used to produce the fake-stereo tapes ruined the original mono tapes. I don't whether that was actually true or whether it was manufactured to add drama to the proceedings, but given RCA's wholesale destruction of first-generation Sun masters in favor of retaining their own (often badly-made) dubs, nothing would surprise me.

MS