@oliver_reid Everyone used tube mastering amplifiers prior to 1963 and many LPs pressed into the 60s were too. Most European LPs were mastered with tube amps well into the 1970s. Westerex developed the 1700 series mastering electronics in 1969. Although the amps were electronically fragile and verged on instability, they were also a very advanced design for the era or even a decade later. I’ve used them and also used tube amps to master the same cut on one surface (a lacquer). We also used a single-ended amp too, since the cutterhead (Westerex 3D) was easily fried by anything over about 7 Watts (meaning that the SET could actually be used for this work). The 1700 series amps made 125 Watts so you can see that the idea was the amps couldn’t be overloaded under any circumstances which is a lesson anyone driving loudspeakers should take to heart. The differences between the various amps was surprisingly subtle although the SET was a bit of a standout as it lacked the resolution of the other two amps, since it had to work harder. The reason for this is the 1700 series electronics employs a 30dB feedback loop (driven by the feedback winding output on the cutterhead). When you run that much feedback, distortion (which is the difference you hear between amplifiers) was kept much lower than the digital community will have you believe is possible on an LP. Distortion occurring in playback is where the lion’s share of ’distortion of the LP’ occurs. Most of the ’studies’ of LP distortion are flawed on this account! Playback distortion issues far outweigh the rather slight differences of what kind of amp was used to master the LP. This is simply because the amplifier, tube or solid state, is loafing to do its job. The takeaway it is far more important to get the playback right, starting with the platter pad (its job is to control resonance in the LP and platter; if this is not done all bets are off). |
So really you are asking about the mastering process and the mastering engineers. Analogue Productions; Kevin Gray; Sterling Sound; Bernie Grundman; Doug Sax; Bill Schnee - just off the top of my head. For any remaster, I ALWAYS look to see who did the mastering - the above are all excellent IMHO. If you like classical, I HIGHLY recommend the Original Source series from DG. EXCELLENT sound/enginnering/mastering.
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@atmasphere +1 |
off the top of my head...add to the list: ERC vinyl (from England) Stan Ricker from MoFi (he also mastered many early Windham Hill LPs at 1/2 speed) TACET Vacuum Tube Logic (VTL) Harmonia Mundi (I expect...) of course, many labels had some all-Analogue LPs, as well as Analogue/Digital mastered LPs. (ex. MoFi)
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