[78-L] Lousy on 78s- great as reissue

[Michael Shoshani]

RCA was recording sessions to long playing lacquers by November, 1940; the
Duke Ellington Centennial box contains aborted takes from the Barney Bigard
small group session recorded in Chicago on Nov 11, 1940. Whether these were
used for dubbing masters or simply for reference/safety isn't clear, but
it's obvious from the sound quality that by the mid-1940s, probably after
the second AFM ban ended, RCA was dubbing 78 rpm issues from lacquer
session recordings.

As for Columbia, I've seen in at least one place (the book "Sessions with
Sinatra") that Wallerstein had two lacquers made at every session, one for
dubbing the 78 masters and one to be left untouched as a pristine source
for long playing records when they were developed. Whether that's true or
whether it's memory coloration is probably something we won't ever know
today.

Aside to dl: Sessions with Sinatra contains oral history (well, written
now) from some of the engineers who worked on the early 78-to-Lp dubbing
sessions, and outlines how they worked out their timing. (If you don't have
access to that particular book, shoot me an email and I'll quote you the
section.)

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 9:12 AM, David Lennick <
dlennick at sympatico.ca.invalid> wrote:

>
> In my opinion, both (first question). I think alternate takes were
> recorded on the same 16" disc because in transferring some sets I found
> notable differences between sides, with some distinctly lacking in highs.
> The recordings were made on 16" discs and dubbed to 78RPM using different
> equalizations at different times and some may have been dubbed from second
> generation copies of the 16" discs. Whether this was done for convenience
> or Columbia really anticipated the development of a long playing record in
> 1940 .. you be the judge. Dubbing meant cleaner source material for when
> the stampers wore out, which probably happened faster with the lamination
> process. Other companies also recorded their originals at 33 and dubbed to
> 78..Decca began doing it in 1943, Capitol maybe around the same time,
> smaller labels like Asch and the Joe Davis labels (you'll find 3 different
> transfers of the same recording on Beacon, Gennett and Davis) and Varsity
> (2 different transfers exist of She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor).