Interesting fact about Neil Young's "Time Fades Away"
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I am on a group that has contributions from lots of well known recording and mastering engineers and this one is from Paul Stubblebine:
"When I first started working in the CBS Records studio in San Francisco, which would put it in 1973, Neil Young did an album 16 track mixed direct to disk. He and his producer Elliot Mazer had the 16 track masters that they had recorded elsewhere. They brought in an automated fader bank which was patched into the console—the CBS consoles had amazing patch bays, so this part was easy. Ran cables down the hall to the mastering room, where Phil Brown cut the lacquers. They did this several nights in a row until they had enough lacquers for the release. Six sets of lacquers was standard at that time but they may have cut a few extra since it would have been so much trouble to do recuts.
I can’t remember who made this bank of automated faders."
Usually a 16 track master would be mixed down to a 4 track tape and then down to a 2 track tape which would be used to cut the lacquers, which in turn would be used to make the stampers to actually stamp out the records. In this case the 16 track master tape was sent to the mastering lathe and the lacquers were cut.
Now to find some of these and take a listen.
Enjoy
"When I first started working in the CBS Records studio in San Francisco, which would put it in 1973, Neil Young did an album 16 track mixed direct to disk. He and his producer Elliot Mazer had the 16 track masters that they had recorded elsewhere. They brought in an automated fader bank which was patched into the console—the CBS consoles had amazing patch bays, so this part was easy. Ran cables down the hall to the mastering room, where Phil Brown cut the lacquers. They did this several nights in a row until they had enough lacquers for the release. Six sets of lacquers was standard at that time but they may have cut a few extra since it would have been so much trouble to do recuts.
I can’t remember who made this bank of automated faders."
Usually a 16 track master would be mixed down to a 4 track tape and then down to a 2 track tape which would be used to cut the lacquers, which in turn would be used to make the stampers to actually stamp out the records. In this case the 16 track master tape was sent to the mastering lathe and the lacquers were cut.
Now to find some of these and take a listen.
Enjoy
Comments
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I believe this was the first live lp with Neil and the Stray Gators
JC approves....he told me so. (F-1 nut) -
I think you're correct. According to what I've read Neil hates this record and thinks it's his worst. Nobody in the band liked each other and argued constantly. It should be easy to look on the "dead wax" and see which lacquer was used for whatever record you're hearing.
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I just bought a copy of this album in a big goodwill haul. How the heck do you read the dead wax?McCormack DNA-1 Amp, Parasound Halo P5 Pre Amp, Denon DVD 2900 CD player, Adcom GDA 700 DAC, VPI Traveler TT with Denon 103R cartridge, Lounge Audio MKiii phono pre and Copla SUT, Polk SDA SRS 3.1 TL speakers, Tributaries series 8 IC's and speaker cable.
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RE2-A thru RE2-F are cut from the original master 16 trackJC approves....he told me so. (F-1 nut)
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Looks like side one is re-2d and side 2 is re-2k. Don't see stereo on the label, is this a mono recording?McCormack DNA-1 Amp, Parasound Halo P5 Pre Amp, Denon DVD 2900 CD player, Adcom GDA 700 DAC, VPI Traveler TT with Denon 103R cartridge, Lounge Audio MKiii phono pre and Copla SUT, Polk SDA SRS 3.1 TL speakers, Tributaries series 8 IC's and speaker cable.
