The very best sound: Direct to Disc

Oh, and perhaps most important of all: Keltner favours metal-shelled snare drums (particularly brass), Tutt wood. Brass is brighter and wetter (more high-frequency ring), wood darker and drier (less ring). Of course, that is effected by the tensioning/tuning of the batter and resonant heads, the tensioning of the snare wires, and the amount of damping applied to the top/batter head, via absorptive pads (as Ringo preferred) or Moon Gel. John Bonham played his Ludwigs wide open (no damping), except for his bass (kick) drum.

To hear the difference between metal and wood-shelled snare drums, compare the snare sound on "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" to the other tracks on The Band's brown album. To play the press roll on the former, Levon required the sensitivity and "wetness" of his old metal-shell Ludwig Supraphonic (those made prior to 1963 brass, '63 and later aluminum alloy). The wood-shell snare drum that was part of his stage set was too dry/dead to make for a good pr. That drum originally came with gut snare wires (as opposed to more modern metal), which, considering it's sound, it may have still been fitted with. VERY dry.

@tomic601, Tom and I really hit it off. I would always gravitate to his workbench when I went into Brooks Berdan, Ltd., where I would watch him find the problem in (often) Jadis amps. He is one of only two guys I would let near a Music Reference amp (the other being clio09). Both of mine (RM-10 Mk.2 & RM-200 MK.2) are unmolested, factory stock. The mods guys would perform on his amps drove Modjeski mad!

About Keltner and Tutt’s drums: in the 70’s (when the Sheffield albums were made) Keltner was playing double-headed (heads on both top and bottom of each drum) Pearl drums, Tutt single-headed (top/batter head only) Ludwigs. So their drum sound could not have been more different. Plus, they used different size sticks, and had different "touches".

Keltner came to Rock/Pop from Jazz, having been born in Tulsa and moving to Pasadena at a young age. His favorite drummer (one of mine too) is Roger Hawkins (The Swampers---the Muscle Shoals studio band, Traffic). To hear the father of Rock ’n’ Roll drumming, listen to Earl Palmer (Little Richard, The Wrecking Crew). I, along with lots of other drummers, used to go see him play live at Chadney’s Steak House in Burbank (which closed in the late-90’s), across the street from the NBC studio where The Tonight Show is taped.

Keltner plays Paiste cymbals, Tutt A. Zildjians; the two brands sound very different. I played A. Zildjians in my younger years, switching to Paiste 602's in the mid-70's. Keltner is a master at drum tuning, his drums usually sounding great (though live I found his DW's to be too "ringy", LOTS of sustain). Tutt I never heard live, and his drumming with Elvis not to my taste (he's fine in the Roy Orbison tribute show).

Keltner has done far more recording than Tutt, and is a true musical artist, not "just" a drummer. Ry Cooder arranges his recordings around Keltner's availability. And then there was Leon Russell, who didn't care for his drumming. He asked Elton John to dismiss him from the recording sessions for their album together.

One reason many d-2-d LP’s are so musically tepid is the musicians’ fear of making a mistake, which requires scrapping the lacquer and starting anew. The cost of doing that runs into thousands of dollars. That’s why Sax and Mayorga used the best studio musicians, who are used to working under the intense pressure of studio recording, which can be very intimidating to non-studio players. Bands actually break up while making their first recordings, finally hearing what they actually sound like. Such was the case for Russ Kunkel, who went on to become a very successful studio drummer (James Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Stephen Stills, Lyle Lovett, etc.). The other members of the band he moved to L.A. with continued to toil in obscurity.

The Thelma Houston Sheffield is a little brash, some thinking there is overload taking place somewhere in the chain (the cutter head or electronics, the mic pre-amps, or perhaps even the mics). The Sheffield Drum Record suffers no such imperfection; just clean, extremely dynamic drumsets played by Keltner and Elvis’ drummer Ron Tutt. Keltner’s playing is good, but Tutt choked a little. ;-)

I don’t own Flamenco Fever or the L.A. 4 discs, having grown weary of using mediocre music as source material for speaker evaluations before finding copies. Time is too precious to me now to waste on just good sound---I turned 70 last week. Plus, I'm done evaluating loudspeakers.

A couple weeks back I proselytized, in the thread entitled "Why no interest in reel-to-reel if you’re looking for the ultimate sound?", that Doug Sax had proven in the early-1970’s that a direct-to-disc LP afforded higher sound quality than any tape recording ever made. I suggested buying every direct-to-disc LP you can get your hands on.

The first d-2-d LP I heard of (thanks to JGH), and subsequently heard in 1972, was the second Sheffield (S-10): The Missing Linc by Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Collegues (the cream of L.A. studio musicians, including bassist Jerry Scheff---renown for his work with Elvis, Roy Orbison, T Bone Burnett, Richard Thompson, the doors, lots of others---and drummer Jim Keltner---Ry Cooder, Bill Frisell, Randy Newman, Dylan, George Harrison, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Steely Dan, Eric Clapton, J.J. Cale, many others). The music on the album is imo pretty corny, but the sound is incredible!

The sound of a d-2-d LP is startling "alive": very "immediate", with incredible transient "snap" (as JGH put it) and punch. In comparison, all but the best tape recordings sound veiled, out-of-focus soft, distant, pale, lifeless. The only thing that came close to the shock of hearing a d-2-d LP was hearing an ESL loudspeaker for the first time. And then hearing my first Decca cartridge, whose sound characteristic was uncannily similar to a d-2-d LP.

As I said above, Sheffield S-10 was the label’s second d-2-d LP, and by the time I heard of it the first---S-9---was out of print. It took me years to find a copy, but find one I did. I now have 13 Sheffields, Pop and Classical. Some actually have musical worth ;-) . One thing to be aware of is that Sax sometimes ran more than one lathe at a time (some LP jackets contain cutter info), and some titles were done with more than one complete side take. So different LP pressings can and do contain different takes!

Another point to make is that Doug Sax didn’t invent direct-to-disc recording, he rediscovered it. Prior to the invention of the tape recorder (by German engineers, for the Nazi war effort. The Allies discovered the recorders in the underground bunkers, and brought them back to the U.S.A.), ALL recordings were made direct-to-disc. Remember the scene in O Brother Where Art Thou, when the hillbillies are singing into the "can" in the radio station? Remember the shot of a lacquer being cut in another room as they did? Direct-to-disc.

Other direct-to-disc record companies sprang up in the wake of Sheffield, the most prolific being Crystal Clear. I have 7 CC’s, including those by The Dillards (you’ve seen them as The Darlings on The Andy Griffith Show), Carlos Montoya, Arthur Fiedler, and Virgil Fox (playing a pipe organ, producing a 16Hz tone on the bottom pedal!). Other labels include M & K (L.A. retailer Miller & Kreisel, where Steve McCormack started his hi-fi career), whose title For Duke (loved by HP) once commanded hundreds of dollars (though I got a copy from Brooks Berdan for $75), and even Cardas (The Gregg Smith Singers, pressed at 45RPM).