Wouldn't those early Capitol 2 mic stereo recordings sound different if they were recorded with U48's instead of U47's? Could that type of recording be done with a figure 8 pattern pair of mics effectively?
It certainly could be done, but the techniques of "spaced cardioids" or "spaced figure 8s" were certainly not typical for the time, whereas spaced omni recordings were all the fashion (Mercury, Everest, RCA, etc.). Many years later, Tony Faulkner brought the idea of spaced figure 8 mics into acceptance, although I don't get the attraction personally.
I've read that they were hoping that Sinatra would record that song. You can imagine him doing it with a walking bass line and some saxes and brass behind him.
Were the Capitol stereo recordings made with the U47s in omni mode? I guess I had assumed they were in cardioid mode (in which case a U48 would have worked just as well), but I guess that was just an assumption.
During the initial stereo period -- so I'm talking of a very set, defined time period, i.e, August of 1956 through about October 1, 1958 -- almost everything sounds like spaced omnis to me. For instance, on COME FLY WITH ME, there's a lot of (what I perceive to be) reflected sound coming into the mics when the drum set really bangs away. Also, Steve Hoffman has commented several times (including the liner notes for the Gleason album he remixed, although that was admittedly done at Capitol NYC, not at the tower in Hollywood) about the "mic way over the for the left" and the "mic way over there for the right." Also, phase seems to be 100% random when Frank is not singing, so they certainly were not using a truly coincident (non-spaced) system. One more anecdotal piece I would add is that wonderful and subtle "poom" of the concert bass drum that runs through the Sings for Only the Lonely album in stereo. Sounds like omnis to me. Another option would have been to use the EMI Stereosonic mic that Capitol possessed, but there's a published interview with Carson Taylor (Capitol mixer of the time) stating that it didn't sound very good because the capsules were too far apart, so I don't think that was used much for pop stuff. (As I've said before, I do think that it may have been rushed into service to "cover" the stereo recording of the title track to Nat Cole's Just One of Those Things LP when something headed south at the start of that session.) From that Carson Taylor interview: Taylor used the Neumann SM2 stereo mic (which he also disliked) for a time after this, and then really made his mark as a classical engineer with the SM69.
I wonder if some of there were U47's Capitol had back in the day that they no longer have? It wasn't like every bit of Capitol from the old days was kept. I doubt they have their Ampex 200's from 1949, for instance...
The Ampex 200 and 200A were able to be converted by Ampex into bathtub 300 machines. Most of them were. If I recall correctly. 300 machines often got upgraded and converted along the way. 350 machines sometimes went through 1/4" formats and electronics and head changes.
Ampex 200A serial #33, used by Capitol for years, still exists: http://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/RecordersAmpex200A.html
This also confirms John Palladino telling me years ago that their 200 was a 201. He thought there might have been something else different about it too - like the head gap? I didn't read through all the details/scans yet. Thanks Matt...
Found this odd little blurb regarding microphones, in an article about Peggy Lee, from July of 1974: <<Her recordings have always been state-of-the-art. In fact, the night before we spoke, she re-recorded six of her vocals because she wanted to experiment with her own custom-made microphone. "It’s a Shure mike but it’s tuned to my voice," she explained. "There are only three of them. One for Tony Bennett, one for Frank Sinatra and one for me.">>
Looking now, there are some live shots of her in the '70s with a Shure 565 (which is essentially an SM58), but I'd be pretty surprised if that was used in the studio.
A friend who I introduced to Sinatra by way of the Jobim album about 15 years ago had caught this special on PBS back then. I remember how impressed he was to see that Frank performed for people in jail, and that he brought the Count Basie Band with him!
There's considerable chat on the last couple of pages about whether Capitol was using U47 or U48 mics, U47 mics being switchable between cardioid (single-direction) pickup and omnidirectional pickeup, while U48s were cardioid and bi-directional (aka figure 8 -- front and back pickup, but not on the sides). Posed or not, here's an acceptable use of a U48 in figure-8 pattern, one singer per side: There are definitely photos at Capitol of multiple singers sharing a figure-8 RCA 44 mic: ....and there are photos of artists performing side-by-side on a pair of U47 (48??) mics: Are there any vintage Capitol shots of somebody sharing a U47 (singers on either side), indicating that the mic would be a U48, which has the figure 8 option? I can't think of any, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there.
True, but in the photos I see at Capitol in which a 44 is used, the engineers were pretty good at keeping "other sound sources" (orch., vocalist, whatever) in the null area, which makes sense. For instance, in the photos above, Frank and Nat are both positioned in such a way that the RCA 44 is (essentially) not picking them up to any degree. If the 44 were replaced with an omni, it would pick up much more Frank/Nat, which would probably not be desirable. Same with photos of sax sections gathered around the 44 (3 players on one side, 2 on the other -- nobody in the "null" areas): the 44 is positioned so as to null-0ut other sources as much as possible.
Agree. I know some insist Capitol's U47's from the old days are 48, though considering John Palladino's comments (which I trust) and the visual evidence of their use, I believe they are 47's. If 48's were acquired in later years, I have no idea about... Maybe they used 48's at Radio Recorders, after Capitol began their Melrose, then Tower studios.
Singing a trio (of sorts) with his two daughters. My guess? He was trying to listen to Lee Gillette or somebody else, and the girls were not being as quiet as perhaps they could have been!