While researching Electrodyne I came across a seminar
that Lynn Fuston (www.3daudioinc.com)
had hosted, “Mic Pres In Paradise.” One of the members on
the panel was an engineer I had never heard of named John Hall.
It turned out John was one of the designers of the discrete op amp
used in the early Electrodyne modules. As John tells it,
“The 709 was an IC designed by BOB Wiler at Fairchild and used in
the original Electrodyne 709 module. We redesigned it as a
discrete monolithic op amp [with much better performance specs]
and that’s what we used in the early Electrodyne 709 (line amp
module), 710, 711 and 712 mic/line/EQ modules. Same with the
earlier designed Quad-Eights which were basically Electrodyne
consoles that were re-branded..”
I was curious to know how the Quad-Eight connection had come
about. Hall continues, “Bud Bennett was a salesman and
started a company called Quad-Eight, so named because he invented
a process for Technicolor Corporation.” Elaborating on this
process a bit more, former Quad-Eight manufacturing engineer David
M. Gordon told me “the process that was called ‘Quad-Eight’ was to
print four strips of 8 mm film on one piece of specially
perforated 35 mm film stock which would then be slit after
developing. This enabled the lab to utilize the 35 mm
processing equipment to develop consumer 8 mm film, hence
‘Quad-Eight.’” “Bud would take orders for film consoles and order
a console from Electrodyne,” said Hall. “He’s have it
shipped to his place in North Hollywood. At which point he
would have the same engraver that we used put a ‘Q’ over the ‘E’
of our Electrodyne console and hence a Quad-Eight console was
born.”
I asked Hall if at some point they started building consoles
themselves and the designs were basically exact replicas of what
Electrodyne had designed for them? “Yes, in fact they
stole all our designs! I used to work on Sundays a lot and
I went in there this one Sunday and worked all day, everything
was fine. The next day I come back to work and all our
schematics were out all over the place, on the floor with foot
prints on them and everything and all our blueprint toner ink
was gone. Well, sure enough Bud paid the truck driver for
Electrodyne at the time and had come in and copied all our
designs. All except the A-1000 op amp design, as we never
did a schematic for just that reason!”
Talking to John about the background of Electrodyne I
realized there was a bit of audio history here that has never
covered before in print. John put me in touch with a
gentleman named Don King, the former service manager and sales
man for Electrodyne and Langevin, who agreed to fill in some of
the missing details.
Don sent me a fine, detailed audio cassette, and as it’s opening
said, “Virginia, there were two
Electrodynes. Both Electrodynes were founded by progenitors
of the motion picture industry. For the sound requirements
of the motion picture industry at that time required you to not
only capture dialogue in a sound stage, yet sometimes that stage
was moving, reminiscent of the old Wells Fargo Stage where you had
not only actors, but hoses, the stage coach itself, environment
issues and the dialogue. |
“The first Electrodyne
components were based on tubes. Not like the tubes we
have today; these were very small with the wires hanging right out
of the bottom. These were not socketed tubes as they are
today. And they were very powerful, with over 100 dB of
preamp gain to fulfill these sound requirements. Eventually
Art Davis sold Cinema to Aerovox, Inc., who really didn’t know
what they were doing in that particular field and eventually
closed down the original Electrodyne company.”
King went on to share with me that year later, Art Moser,
who had retainer the name “Electrodyne,” agreed to sell Don
McLaughlin (a friend of his) the name “Electrodyne” and the
second incarnation of Electrodyne was born. “This time,
however, they did not use the tube-based design but the new
integrated circuit [IC op amp] designs that were just coming
out about that time.” Actually theirs was an improved
Fairchild 709 integrated circuit redesigned and called the
A1000. Later this would morph into the Electrodyne
A2000.
C ontinuing
the op amp lineage for a moment, David M. Gordon told
me, “The first Quad-Eight op amp would be called the AM3 (the
square, potted Block that looks like an API 2520). Chief
engineer for Quad-Eight, Deane Jensen, would later redesign this
into the AM4 hybrid op amp [which he later refined into the
famous Jensen 990 op amp] and after Jensen left Quad-Eight this
would morph into the AM10 [found in the Coronado, Pacifica and
Ventura consoles], finally after Mitsubishi acquired Quad-Eight,
it would become the AM12 [and later AM12b -their attempt at a
cost reduced replacement for the AM10].”
King continues, “Electrodyne’s true claim to fame was that it
was the first company to take all these separate components -the
mic preamplifier, the line amplifier, controller, equalizer,
router and attenuator -and combine them all into one, as they
called it, ‘input module.’” Today we know this as a console
channel strip. “Not only did they combine all these
electronics, they also made it so that it was not impedance
critical. You see, until Electrodyne developed this method
you had to match all your different ohm-ages when combining
different pieces of electronics. Broadcast consoles were
especially very impedance critical. Electrodyne eliminated
the need for this by developing the ‘active combining network’
(acting as a bridged amplifier), which was a 10,000-ohm device
used to ‘route’ all the individual 600 ohm ‘integrated circuits’
modules’” (read channel strips), thus developing what we now
know as the ‘recording bus.’ Your could add or subtract
many, many 600 ohm modules to this system before it became a
problem.” Something we don’t’ even have to think about
today, thanks to Electrodyne.
 The
consoles were manufactured in-house at their new state of the
art facility built in North Hollywood, California, which at the
time had its own research and development department, sheet
metal fabrication shop, carpentry shop (the early Electrodyne
console housings were made of wood) and floor assembly area.
All of this was a very new concept at the time, and the world of
console manufacturing as we know it would never be the same.
Unique to these consoles, they could be ordered in what was
advertised at the time as “another Electrodyne first . . . A
Kaleidoscope Of Color” as the engraved console surface over the
aluminum was Formica. This led to the wild colors that can
be found on the strips today. Even though you could order
just about any color, I was told by one of the original
designers that they had to talk Emmylou Harris (and then
husband/producer) Brian Ahern out of the shocking pink color
they wanted. It was a little “too much.”
The companies born out of Electrodyne read like a
who’s who in the annals of the audio industry.
Ed Reichenbach was hired to build the audio transformers used
in the consoles. Don McLaughlin would later fund Ed to
become his own transformer company,
Reichenbach Engineering (“a truly superior device”, states
King). Gene Sakasgowa went on to start Sake Magnetics from
the Gauss Corporation, who were part of MCA Technologies Group,
the same company that would eventually acquire Electrodyne
around 1970. Langevin was bought by Electrodyne because
Altec and Gliss couldn’t supply slide wire attenuators fast
enough to Electrodyne. “And therefore Altec couldn’t even
build their own consoles at the time,” asserts King, so by
buying Langevin they were sure to have sufficient supplies on
hand. Later the Computer Equipment Company would purchase
MCA Technologies (around 1972) and a new company would be formed
which had most of these companies under their corporate parent
company, now called Cetec. King went on to say, “The Ce
taken from Computer Equipment Company, the tec taken from MCA
TECnologies.” Thus, you had Electrodyne, Langevin, Saki,
Gauss, Optimation and Reichenbach all under the same parent
company. Keeping in mind all the original designs came
from the first motion picture companies Western Electric and RCA
and you can see how the lineage of the audio industry was born.
King would go to state, “Don McLaughlin would later retain
most of Electrodyne’s designs but would form a new company
calle
David M. Gordon elaborates further, “Deane Jensen, who would
go on to chief engineer for Quad-Eight, started his own op amp
designs before starting to sell Reichenbach
transformers as
retrofit units for most big name consoles and then he went full
time with his own company:
Jensen Transformers by Reichenbach Engineering.”
d Sphere, which is still alive and well today but now
manufacturing audio consoles anymore.” I called Don
McLaughlin to ask him about the similarities of the original
Electrodyne consoles and the Sphere console. McLaughlin
explained, “The Sphere preamp and EQ were actually an
improvement to the ones used in the Electrodyne consoles.
The original equalizer inductors would saturate when pushed all
way and start ringing. Sphere used bigger inductors to
stop this and added more frequency points, switchable frequency
points.” The graphic version of this EQ would go to be
called the Sphere 900 Series EQ (there was a 900 and, later, 910
and 920 versions that could be ordered). I had heard of
these EQs and seen pictures of them but never got to use any of
them. “A shame,” McLaughlin muses. “Several
mastering houses at the time used these as their equalizers.
There was also a fixed frequency semi parametric EQ as well as a
fully parametric EQ (the EQ 1014) that could be ordered along
with those graphics, however the customer wanted it configured.”
When asked how the mic pres differed from the Electrodynes,
McLaughlin sates “the mic pres were basically an improved John
Hall design using a new op amp Hall designed called the SPA 62.
Reichenbach still supplied the transformer.” In his quest
for sonic perfection McLaughlin told me, “Later I also came up
with a different circuit design that would stop the phase switch
from popping when engaged, same with the EQ in/out switch.”
This is a retrofit that McLaughlin still does to existing Sphere
consoles today.
The list of Sphere purchasers, as expected, is quite
impressive. Artists such as Ronny Milsap, Hank
Snow, The Judds and major studios of the time, such as Sigma
Sound and Alpha Audio, bought Sphere consoles. As
McLaughlin told me, more than a dozen Sphere consoles ended up
in Nashville in the long run. Even the U.S. White House
bought one in 1975 under the Ford Administration.
Unfortunately, this was sold last year, replaced by a new
digital console. Something tells me that the board won’t
last the 30 years the Sphere did - time will tell.
Langevin, through the help of Don King, was later bought by
Manley Labs. Gauss is still alive as Gauss International
(making high speed tape duplicators). Reichenbach
Engineering ceased operations about four years ago and all the
assets were purchased by his son Tom Reichenbach of
CineMag Engineering, who can still make all the old
Quad-Eight and Electrodyne transformers. Quite a history
that lives on even in today’s world of hi-tech recording.
In The End
David M. Gordon was the last manufacturing manager of
Quad-Eight in Valencia, California until it closed. As
David tells it, in brief . . . “In the ‘70s Quad-Eight made a
deal to acquire Westrex (it fit well with the focus on ths film
business). QE/W was the result, then Mitsubishi purchased
the company as an American presence (Mitsubishi Pro Audio) to
sell the digital multitrack that they built, bundled with a
console (Westar). When Mitsubishi decided that they could
not sustain the company they sold it to Electori Co. It
was run as Quad-Eight electronics until Mr. Hatori’s death when
it was closed down.” David now works as managing director
for Josephson Engineering Inc. (
www.josephson.com ), makers of some of today’s finest
microphones.
Even today Quad-Eight lives on, to a certain degree.
Ken Hirsch started Orphan Audio out of a love for these old
vintage designs (
www.orphanaudio.com ). You can actually but “kits”
from Orphan Audio to build your own Quad-Eight mic pres from
vintage line amp cards. For the savvy studio engineer this
could be a way to have the vintage sound without the guesswork
or research required when converting these line cards from
scratch. And for anyone who owns a Quad-Eight console, Ken
may have just the parts you need to keep it running as smooth,
plus there’s a Quad-Eight
http://www.josephson.com),/forum on his site.
Recently A-Designs Audio (
www.adesignsaudio.com ) introduced the familiarly named
Pacifica mic preamp (see review this issue) with a design based
on (yet different) than the vintage Quad-Eight preamps.
Today there are several studios that pride themselves on
owning one of these vintage beauties from this past -my studio,
Silvertone, being one of them- with a 1969 Electrodyne ACC1204
(15x4) console. Not only do they sound great, they look
cool as hell and afer thirty plus years in service are still
considered by some as one the best sounding consoles designed.
Yes, when an old pot finally goes or a cap leaks and dries out
they’re a pain in the ass to get fixed, but what you are
rewarded with in sound more than makes up for keeping these
running smoothly. As my tech, Ken McKim (Retrospec,
Trouble Report owner, Allaire Studio’s technician), tells me,
“The beauty of these modules is in the simplicity of their
design.” Just try to buy the same build today and see what
you spend for it.
As with a lot of the manufacturers of the past I don’t think
they realized at the time what a profound effect their creations
would have on the world of art well into the next century.
Listen to the soncis of Pink Floyd’s The Wall (mixed on
three Quad-Eights tied together) or Boston’s “More Than A
Feeling” and hear the history of Electrodyne, Quad-Eight and
Sphere.
I would like to thank the following people for their
direct contributions to this article:
John Hall, Don King, Don McLaughlin, David M. Gordon,
Ken McKim, Pat Morford, Bob Ohlsson, Mark Addison, Danny
McKinney, Scott Benson, Tony Perrrino, Carl Landa, Jeff Britton
and Frank Moscowitz. I would also like to invite any
individuals who can fill in the blanks to please write
TapeOp magazine so that together we canput together the most
accurate and detailed account of our audio lineage.
Orphan Audio is reestablishing the Quad_Eight name.
The MP-227 preamp and classic channel strip products show
shipping.
www.quadeightelectronics.com
Visit Mark Addison’s fantastic Quad-Eight Forum
www.quadeight.net
Author: Larry DeVivo runs Silvertone Mastering in New
York State.
www.silvertonemastering.com
|
And here you had this little microphone up above the actors trying
to capture all this sound/”