THE SAVAGE_Gary Taylor

[fenderplucker]

Hi Gary,

I don't think they did with the equipment at hand in the early '60's. I have the Abbey Road plugin for the RS124 limiters/compressors that were probably used at that time, and that have apparently been modeled directly on the actual units, but they don't seem to do anything untoward: just fairly rapid attack and long delay. I don't have much information on the RS114 limiter that was also available at the time so I don't know if it could introduce such an effect. Later on the Fairchilds were in use but again the plugins that claim to accurately model the physical units do not seem to have any such effect. I guess the only way to be really sure would be to test the actual units but that is not likely to be possible.

The interaction between the reverb and echoes is however quite significant. I have found that the clarity of the echoes can be reduced considerably by just increasing the length of the reverb decay without going over the top in the reverb level, and the reverb chamber used by Studio 2 did have a fairly long decay. With different echo and reverb decay times and the compressors bringing up the gain at the end of the tracks there are certainly some very weird effects that can be heard like at the end of KonTiki, as I mentioned above, for example, where the reverb certainly changes the character of the echoes. This also happens to a lesser degree at the end of The Savage. Then there is the weird delayed reverb on the snare on Midnight and also Sleepwalk, though to a lesser degree. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any accurate model for the Abbey Road reverb for us to play with. I use the convolution program Altiverb and have got close, but it still lacks that marvelous sumptuous character that we hear on the recordings. I guess it is all part of the magic of the Abbey Road recordings that none of us will be able to fully replicate in our home studios.

Uncle Fiesta, The Shadows minus Hank backing tracks are not available for general distribution since that would almost certainly violate copyright. They can be generated for a number of Shadows tunes with programs like Adobe Audition or the jamVOX, but we use them only for our research in understanding how Hank's distinctive sound came to be.

Paul.

[Gary Allen]

Hi Paul and thanks for the quick reply...regards Gary

[Phil.c]

Hi Paul,

A great job by you and Gary with this and very close You also know that when listening to it in six months time and no matter how good it is now that you will find that you could have improved on it, Try doing the whole shabang, when there's not just the guitar and echo to sort out

Re-your reverb on snares:- They did a lot of strange things with reverb back then, as you know I have produced lots of Shads bt's etc, there have been delays and reverbs on just about every instrument and with just about every configuration possible, this is what makes the bt real and not just karaoke, but one has to actually do it to know what goes where as just listening does'nt work.

By the way, i've emailed you a lot of info about the RS124 compressors, you should find it interesting.

Phil

[fenderplucker]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your comments, I certainly don't envy you trying to reproduce all parts of the tracks, just the lead is hard enough!

Thanks also for sending the info about the RS114 and 224 compressors. It reminded me that they use variable mu technology and, as such, would not have any dynamic delay effects. The only vintage compressors I know of that might exhibit such behavior are the Urei/Teletronix LA-2A and LA-3A that use electroluminescent panel and light dependent resistor technology and do have compression characteristics that depend upon previous program content, but they were not used at Abbey Road at the time of interest.

Regards,

Paul.

[Gary Allen]

I would have thought that any compressor depending on where it was in the chain at the studio could give the desired effect of hearing the echo tail louder and clearer when Hank stopped playing which is why the echo doesnt overtake the main melody in the likes of The Savage or Kon Tiki or even 36-24-36, what do you think guys ? Gary

[fullerton62strat]

Interesting posting which has developed into a technical equipment hunt.

Firstly, let me say that this track of the Savage is superbly played by Gary with that all important 'punch' when he hits the strings. The backing track is intriguing: no Hank Marvin, but NO Bruce Welch either? Where is the rhythm guitar? This alone would change the character of the instrumental guitar along with some subtle harmonics.

A while back I came across an item that was being sold on ebay; an RS106 echo control unit used at the Abbey Road studios in the very early days - priced at £28,000! Yes, you read it right. Evidently only about 20 odd units were ever made. Chances are that one of these would have somehow been used in the recordings of most artists including the Shadows. Could this have been a contributing factor in 'THAT SOUND'.

Some details about the unit are as follows:
----------------------
RS 106 ''Echo Control Unit'' - Band Pass Filter
In order to make a great reverb sound you have to filter the sound beforehand. At Abbey Road as filter the RS 106 Filter was used, which could remove both highs and lows. This was a passive unit with the following settings: (see pic at bottom of post)


There was also a dial to set reduction, ranging from 0 to -50dB.

The RS 106 Filters were sometimes also used as a replacement for the more limited EQ on the mixer.

The most commonly used frequency setting as Send was Bass Cut 600 Hz and Top Cut 10 kHz, but that does not mean that this was used for Shadows recordings.

With this information you can however try the same frequency steps in your DAW.

------------------------

Interesting, if nothing else. Is there an equivalent today?

Going back to the sound file by Gary and the TVS3 - excellent.

John

[Phil.c]

Hi John,

It's documented that the famous chamber sound would have been quite different without the RS106's pre-filtering which was an integral component of that sound and was designed in 1954 as the RS106A Echo Unit specifically for the job.

Also mentioned by Malcolm Addley is that echo chambers don't like low frequencies being pumped into them and they produce a boomy sound, the unit was used to cut the lows and highs and only sent the middle frequencies. It only cut frequencies and did'nt boost any.

Phil

[fenderplucker]

Hi John,

As Phil mentioned, the bandpass filter was used before the echo chamber and certainly contributed to the Abbey Road reverb sound. We similarly limit the bandwidth of the reverb. I don't understand your comment about no Bruce, he is in the right channel at the same level as the original. Maybe your right speaker is not working?

Regards,

Paul.

[Phil.c]

It would be interesting to see what happens by inserting a bandpass from the echo sends with middle frequencies only, the big problem though would be that unless we have the same caracteristics of studio two's reverb room then the same effect may not be obtained.

When I visted studio two we were not allowed to go into the reverb room but were shown a video of it, for those who don't know where it is in relation to the studio, it's at the opposite end to the control room, the bands usually played in the left corner, there are double doors in the centre of the back wall, it's through those,down a few steps and on the right.

Phil

[dave robinson]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for commenting on the posting. I am sure that you could answer your question about the echoes at the end just as well as I but, as you have asked it, I will repeat some comments I made on a different site I made a while ago.

With regard to the echoes at the end, there are many factors that come into play, only one of which is the echo unit. Much of what I say below will already be well known to many, but please bear with me so I can try to give a full answer. I am sure that many others could also add to the discussion

Firstly, what comes out of the echo unit depends largely on what goes in and so the first main factor to be considered is the nature of the last note(s) or chord(s) being played. This includes the tone and setup of the guitar as well as the playing style. Major factors include the strings (new or dead, how bright), the setup (are the strings being choked on the frets), the tone of the guitar itself, (wood, pickups, leads etc). The playing style is also critical (how hard are the notes being played, which notes in a chord get greater emphasis, how strong is the attack, how long are the notes held, how rapid is the release, etc). In this regard each player will be different and this is partly what gives Hank his unique style along with his groove and sense of melody.

Then the signal goes to the echo unit and, as I mentioned in an earlier post with regard to units like the Meazzi (or TVS3), the sound of the echoes is then influenced by how hard the unit is being driven, both because it affects the sound of the direct signal (due to non-linearities in the valve stages) as well as the echo signal (due to compression and distortion in the magnetic tape/drum reproduction process). These affect not just the early echo sound (how clean or "gritty") but also the way they decay. Here I am not just talking about how many repeats occur and how rapidly they decay, but also how the tone of the echoes changes as they are recycled around the delay loop. Clean echoes will be less affected (though they will still be shaped by the limited bandwidth of the recording process), but distorted echoes will have a more complex harmonic (or anharmonic) structure and the higher and lower artifacts will be progressively lowered as they go around the loop. So the level setting as well as the dynamic range of the signal coming in (i.e. attack etc, as mentioned above) is very important. The actual timing and levels and rate of decay of the echoes are of course also critical, but by no means the only concern and are they are the easiest to get right.

Then the signal (note plus echoes) goes to the amplifier and it can have a role in shaping the tone (tone control settings, type of loudspeaker/cabinet, how hard is it being driven, is it compressing the sound, which strongly influences the sound of the echoes, etc).

Then we get to the actual recording process and this can also have a marked effect of the sound of the echoes (and the famed "Abbey Road sound"). The sound will be directly influenced by any equalization and compression/limiting. These may be applied at the recording desk during the recording, later during mixing, or even later again during the master cutting stage (at least in the days of vinyl!). In particular, any compression will have a direct effect on the decay of the echoes and how they sit in the mix, depending upon the attack/decay time and compression rate settings of the compressor/limiter. There are also subtle differences in the sound introduced by different compressors/limiters. Another critical factor is the microphone type and placement technique as well as the ambient setting during recording. Malcolm Addey has commented that he spent considerable time in getting this last factor just right and would often alter the distance from the microphone to the loudspeaker to get it how he wanted. This, together with any added reverb, will also interact with the sound of the echoes. The effect of a number of these factors can be heard at the end of Kon Tiki where the echoes decay and change quality, but the reverb actually blooms up a bit due to the effect of the compressor(s) letting the gain come up again, and this largely masks the final echoes .

So, was something being overlooked in our recording? Almost certainly! Even if we had Hank and his Meazzi, without all of the above factors in exactly the right combination and setting, the sound of the decaying echoes would invariably be different to the original recording (which had just one particular performance and arrangement at one point in time). Given all this, I am a bit surprised that we manage to get as close as we do!

Finally, I was taken by how similar our posting was to one you posted some time ago which was played by Daniel through the TVS3 you had at the time, though the lead was possibly a bit too soft in relation to the backing. Nevertheless, I thought that this was the closest to the origin by a considerable margin to that date. Listening once again to the end the echoes are quite different to our posting, showing just how much they depend upon the actual settings used the whole recording chain.

I suppose we could go back and try a whole range of different ways of playing the last chord and settings of the various elements in the signal and recording chain, and I am sure that we would get closer than we did by just playing through the tune, mostly in a single take. Maybe if we get a lot of spare time we will, otherwise we are quite happy with the overall sound file and its closeness to the original.

Regards,

Paul.

So it doesn't do it then?