What gear gave 60's records that "gritty" sound?

[Slider]

Everytime I hear certain old 60's tunes on the radio I'm amazed at the musical distortion I hear.
Is this mostly due to a combo of tape, old mics, and tube pre's?
For instance, yesterday whiile driving I heard a Lovin spoonful track, then a Simon & Garfunkel track played back to back and both had the same warm gritty distorted sound.
Why is this sound seemingly impossible to get now?

[creature.of.habit]

cause you're not using and overdriving the same "crappy" equipment these ppl were recording with maybe? it was all they had...and they would probably kill for what we have nowadays..

i would kill for what they had though..kind of funny this never ending subject.

[Luke]

The magic ingredient is called ........................TAPE.

[Derrick]

Listen to the Doors song LA Woman and you will hear Jim clipping the HELL out of the equipment on peaks. I mean it's not subtle either!

[soundguy]

what equipment?

do you even know what was used?

Funny you bring up LA Woman, Ive beeen trying to find out the story on that session for a long time, everyone seems to have their own version of what went down on that record.

dave

[I'm Painting Again]

Not all 60's records have distortion on them..listen to the command records productions..or what have you..so its not the limitations of the gear that existed at that time..a 50's tape deck sounds as hi-fi as it gets in terms of recorders, no?

[Derrick]

what equipment?

do you even know what was used?

Funny you bring up LA Woman, Ive beeen trying to find out the story on that session for a long time, everyone seems to have their own version of what went down on that record.

dave

Do I need to know? UA makes the claim to be the equipment used. I assume pres and comps. Maybe it was the tape machine. Maybe it was (gasp) mastering equipment. My guess is the pre. Whatever was used... the clipping is not subtle!

[soundguy]

you dont need to know but Id love it if you did. UA certainly claims to have been in there, but so does another company and Im more inclined to believe that however I cant find a single person who was physically there to confirm it either way, just lotsa folks a few generations ahead of me in the LA set who knew the studio system to kinda guess what might have been shuffled into there when it was brand new. Im under the impression that LA Woman might have been one of, if not the fiirst record done in there. Does anyone know anyone who might have a definitive history of the place?

What I hear the most on that recording is the glassy top end of an ampex 351 recorder, maybe they mixed onto one of those, but thats just a guess, Im sure there is more than one way to arrive at that sound for sure.

dave

[creature.of.habit]

Im sure there is more than one way to arrive at that sound for sure.

altec?

[JGriffin]

The magic ingredient is called ........................TAPE.

Then why does it not sound like that on '70s and '80s records?

[joel hamilton]

The magic ingredient is called ........................TAPE.

Then why does it not sound like that on '70s and '80s records?

Because obviously, it is not (only) the tape based recording...

Slider,

What song(s) made you post this? If it is something like the stones, I hear different devices getting hit, compared to the Fender IV or zappa....

Maybe a specific example would lead to more specific replies... I dunno.

[contramark]

Ok i cant say that i was recording in the 60's but here are some more detailed ideas I came up with after reading your original post:

1) First off the gear of the day (being almost all tube based) had very bad frequency range. Notice the very high highs and low lows are just cut off. The extended range of frequency in recordings didnt come until transistors. Some albums today try to recreate this with clever low-pass filtereing (example The Shins).

2) The Signal-To-Noise ratio was horrible with the old gear. What made matters worse was recording using 4-track. Every bounce and overdub amplified the noise.

3) Distortion was very very common in the 60's. However having no digital technology and mostly tubes in the studio, this probably wasn't as feared characteric as today because their gear in general made a more musical type of distortion. Not saying that they meant to distort everything but with their limited headroom and slow acting compressors/limiters (tube) im sure this happened much more often than todays studios. Cranking that mic/pre gain one more notch meant getting a better signal-to-noise ratio.

4) Tape is the last ingredient.

-> Now i dont think your gona find audio compnies today manufacturing gear with horrible frequency range and low SNR, but there are some ways to get that sound. Try to recrate the vibe with what you have.

[soundguy]

1) First off the gear of the day (being almost all tube based) had very bad frequency range. Notice the very high highs and low lows are just cut off. The extended range of frequency in recordings didnt come until transistors.

huh?

2) The Signal-To-Noise ratio was horrible with the old gear. What made matters worse was recording using 4-track. Every bounce and overdub amplified the noise.

huh? the noise and distortion of, for instance, a langevin AM16 could not even be properly measured until decades after it was built as the distortion meters self noise was greater than the noise of the am16. The am16 would years later actually test lower than spec once someone built a device to properly measure it...

Tape formulations were apparently noisy as shit and recording levels were much lower, that was a big source of noise for sure. There is no question that companies made junk, but lots of companies didnt make junk and that stuff is entirely usable in toddays modern recording studio. Those are kinda whopping big generalizations that dont apply to everything from the 50's and 60's.

dave

[contramark]

huh? the noise and distortion of, for instance, a langevin AM16 could not even be properly measured until decades after it was built as the distortion meters self noise was greater than the noise of the am16. The am16 would years later actually test lower than spec once someone built a device to properly measure it...

Tape formulations were apparently noisy as shit and recording levels were much lower, that was a big source of noise for sure. There is no question that companies made junk, but lots of companies didnt make junk and that stuff is entirely usable in toddays modern recording studio. Those are kinda whopping big generalizations that dont apply to everything from the 50's and 60's.

dave

Not really sure how much more clear I could have made my explanation but maybe that is because I have taken some technical knowledge for granted?

1) Id like to explain myself more if possible. What do you not understand about limited frequency range of older gear used in the 60's? Are you not comfortable with the term frequency range or did i explain it in a confusing manner? When i say limited range, i don?t mean to the extremes of say a telephone, but rather if you look at the EQ curves of older gear there are cutoffs noticeably more narrow than the standard 20Hz-20Khz of today. Let me know if this makes more sense?

If you want to know why this is check out info about transistors and feedback driven circuits and why they perform better (from a spec point of view) than older tube gear.

2) Just because some of the Signal to Noise ratio measuring techniques were not available in the 60's does not mean that it did not exist. Same goes for THD specs. So gravity did not exist until Newton discovered the phenomena 400 years ago? Not really sure where you were going with that but let me know what you mean more clearly. I never suggested that the companies in the 60's purposely looked at these specs and made them have bad performance it just is a characteristic of the gear.

[nacho459]

The things old recordings had modern recording don't include the following:

transformers
tape
impedance matching
carbon comp resistors
silver mica caps
tubes
ribbon mics
Hal Blane
etc.

As far as a lot of LA stuff from the 60's especially if it was recorded at United/Western I think 610 consoles and Scully machines.

When I want an old school over driven vocals sound I use my Altec 1567a.