SH Spotlight Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" 45 & 33 1/3 RPM Hoffman/Gray vinyl mastering & equalization notes..

That's funny. I really love David Bowie's vocals and they're all comped.
Never bothered me knowing that they were.

The solo sounds so amazing they obviously did it the way it had to be done!

- - -

Speaking of bright, the overtones on the guitars on "Never Going Back Again" are almost blisteringly sharp at 45rpm.

 

Like Tom Petty says of Mike Campbell's solo at the end of Running Down A Dream...that Mike turned his back, and just went off, and Tom's thinking " what the...? " and luckily they caught it on tape.

 

Happy Record Store Day to me! This is one of the best sounding records I've ever heard. I'm hearing guitars and percussion that I never even knew existed in these songs. The stereo image is beautiful.

I have a modest system and this record makes it sound like a million bucks.

Well done Steve & Kevin, well done.

 

Wow, that is very subtle. That's just about getting down to the granular level with this stuff.

I know you're an analog guy, but you really oughta check out some of the digital EQs out there. I'm a huge fan of the Sonox (formerly Sony Oxford) EQ, which sounds phenomenal. And I know a few people who like the Waves Linear Phase EQ as well, plus the digital Weiss boxes.

The trick to me with this analog stuff is that it's much harder to do EQ and level changes on the fly within the song. At least with a workstation, you can automate it and drop in one adjustment on the verse, a separate setting on the chorus, and then back to the original settings. Very hard to do in real-time with knobs and faders. I've seen this happen with spliced-in masters that made me crazy, like the edits and level dip on ELO's "Sweet Talkin' Woman."

Believe me, I was very suspicious of automation and all this stuff for a long time, but when I finally got into it about 7 years ago, it opened up my eyes (and ears) to a different way of working. To me, it works better for what I do -- but no question, if the end result works, it doesn't matter how you get there. And I don't doubt that the Rumours 45RPM sounds great. I just put in an order for it through Amazon ($40, yikes) and look forward to hearing it.

 

I'll look at the matrix info of my vintage pressing when I get home. I used to work in a used record store, and I went through twenty copies of Rumours trying to find the best one. Just to be clear, I love what you've done with the 45 RPM pressing of Rumours, but I'm just used to hearing the guitar parts of "Go Your Own Way" sound a little hotter, particularly Lindsey's solo. During my very brief career as a rock musician, my band used to cover "Go Your Own Way," so I know that song backwards and forwards, I guess. It is a brilliant guitar solo, however he did it in the studio. I've often heard that Jimmy Page dashed off the "Stairway to Heaven" solo in one take - I guess Lindsey did not do that for the "Go Your Own Way" solo?

One other thing I love about the 45 RPM version is how it is possible to pick out each separate vocalist in the backing vocal sections. On the normal LP, the background singers on any given song kind of blend together, if that makes any sense, but, on this new LP, I can hear each individual singer, and pick out "Hey, that's Christine singing that harmony line." Pretty neat.

 

Thanks for the notes. Very cool. I just ordered the 33RPM version from Amazon.

 

Very interesting info from all. My 45 was delivered today And I have really enjoyed it.

 

Spare a thought for a poor Irishman, the 45rpm set costs $81 to import.

JG

 

Fascinating thread. Steve, thanks for sharing some of background info.

 

"Comped" means?

 

Great thread! This is yet another one to bookmark when folks come along in other thread and swear Steve Hoffman never ever boosts EQ when mastering.

 

Great thread, thanks Steve for providing this info. The 45 set is absolutely wonderful. Excellent job.

 

Steve, What does "Do not massage" mean at the end of a few of the songs?

 

Thanks. I was thinking "composed" but that did not seem to make sense.

 

OH, that would be a disappointment if LB's epic solo is a Frankenstein.
To me, "comp a solo" means to provide backing chords behind a soloist such as a piano "comp" behind a saxophone improvisation, ie accompany.
I doubt that's what Steve meant because it wouldn't make sense the way he uses it.

 

Vidiot,

The Sontec 432 is still considered the Holy Grail eq in mastering circles, along with the GML 9500 and Manley Massive Passive.

I can't afford it...it goes for 10 to 12 grand. But to me the Sonnox eq plugin sounds nothing like it.

ME's are still very reluctant to go the plugin route, though the Weiss boxes are widely used digital eq's.

Even with digital sources it's still very common practice to do a digital-analog-digital roundtrip just to get that Sontec goodness in there (and analog compression, but that's a different story and a different mastering style).

Every ME I know (me included) uses a DAW these days though to be able to work in sections.

 

Steve,

Can you give more detail to Second hand News where you state:

Second Hand News +1/+1 (ORIGINAL PIECED ENDING PROMO VERSION) Do not massage.

Is this ending dfferent from the original LP since it's a promo version?

 

It's a happy ending

 

I would guess that "combed" would not be a suitable abbreviation.

 

hi would someone be so kind to briefly explain what the "tones" are, is it some lead-in tone on tha tape, and what that does, does it calibrate the tape somehow, or, yea i just wanted to ask about that....very interesting thread, thanks