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Hello:Yesterday, as I was doing my rounds here in the SF Bay Area, I cruised through a certain recycling place and there was a wall full of recently donated open reel pre-recorded tapes and some unusual looking home recordings, nearly all of which were in a perfect looking state of preservation. Most dated from the early 1960's, so I feel that there is an excellent prospect of them being playable.
Amongst the gems was a copy of the Vanguard "Weavers at Carnegie Hall, Volume 2", which must be kind of a rarity, one would think. I am interested in listening to that particualar tape!
A lot of the home-recorded tapes featured extensive notes about the programs which were taken from the air, chiefly in and around 1961-1964. The ones I purchased were of folk music programs over local stations KPEN and KFOG, circa 1964. Then, there was something most unusual!
There was a reel which purportedly contained the entire broadcast of the re-enactment of "War of the Worlds", local broadcast over KPEN in 1964. Inside the box were newspaper ads for the broadcast and some reviews, one of which was not entirely favorable. As a teenager living in the SF Bay Area, I well remember tuning into that particular event!
So, hopefully, I now can nostagically relive that one!
Follow Ups:
Hi, all:As a little follow-up to my original note, I wanted those of you interested in vintage open reel tapes (4-track mostly) to read a bit about the results of my auditioning the stack of tapes I recently acquired.
First of all, despite my doubts about the quality of 4-track open reel pre-recorded tapes in general, which is based upon my own personal experience in purchasing some of these in the sixties, when they were NEW at that time, I offer the following observations:
1.) With a couple of minor exceptions, these tapes which were duplicated around 1959 and the early sixties, seem to be of decent quality. The previous owner failed to add leader on his reels, but once I did so and started to play them, I was FLOORED by the quality of what I had found recently.
2.) Among the best sounding of these tapes were some issued on Vanguard (Weavers at Carnegie Hall, Vol. 2), some on Elektra (Theodore Bikel live at Town Hall) and most of all, some reels issued by World Pacific (formerly Pacific Jazz) out of Southern California. The World Pacific material by The MasterSounds, is exemplary, if not astonishing. Richard Bock was an impressive sound engineer, to say the least. I put him right up there with Rudy Van Gelder, if you do not mind my saying so!
3.) A couple of these reels, produced or manufactured between 1959 and around 1961, squeal while going through my ReVox A-77. They do not leave excessive residue, but I was a bit surprised at this happening. I suppose the only cure is to bake them? I am not about to do this, however, since I do not own a convection oven and do not plan to obtain one simply for two or three reels among many others.
So, bottom line....I was astonished!
There is a reel featuring Kid Ory performing W.C. Handy compositions and it was issued on the Verve label, probably around 1960-61. This one reel will knock your socks off, literally! Among the best sounding open reel tapes I have run across over many years, I had the utmost respect for one particular tape. This was a 2-track 5" sampler spool issued in 1957 by the folks at Stereophony label, featuring Dixieland music by Doc Evans and his band.
This item is much sought-after among collectors of 2-track material, but the Kid Ory 4-track on Verve is as good or better, considering the quality of the players and overall realism of the performance captured on the recording.
I was in Dixieland HEAVEN when I played that reel yesterday!
When the dust has settled on these, I probably will want to offer them for sale, since I am running out of space. I will transfer them to high resolution media and then probably just "let go" of them for collectors who appreciate good sound when they hear it.
Look for them either on the classified hereabouts or otherwise, on Audiogon in some category.
they are a look back at some great sounds.
Send them to me after you have listened to them.
Ed
Nice grab! I kinda gave up on thrift/recycling stores a few years ago. I was looking for vinyl at the time though. When I lived in the city, I used to check out some of them and found a pair of Stromberg Carlson mono tube amps at the Goodwill on Mission. They were in pretty good condition and I kept them for years. I never got around to replacing the missing tubes (this was in '85 I think) and my mom sold them at a garage sale! Ever since, I never throw any audio related stuff away. BTW I took my Technics rs1500 to Adam at Lieberman Sound for biasing and regular adjustments. He seems like he really knows his way around anything that uses tape/film. I got his url from one of your posts a while back.
More on the subject though, I grew up in Georgia and (I can't remember the exact year) I used to tape a one hour show on a local collage radio station called the Psychodellic show. I used to tape a mono mic to the radios speaker and I would listen to it over and over till the next weeks show. It must have been about '65 or so. I don't think that folks that didn't live through those times can relate to a time when you'd be forced to turn off something like Hendrex. Now they use his music to sell cel-phones!
Let us know how the tapes sound. The WotW recording would be really amazing if the audio is decent. I love the idea of fifty year old broadcasts too. Nearly all of my audio gear is of 50's - 60's vintage and so is much of the music i like.. often reflect on what it would have been like to have been cognizent during that time (i was born in the angry year of 1968).
Hi, marc-homeslice!Well, let me try to explain one of the reasons why the home-made tapes might prove interesting to listen to again, after more than 43 years, anyway!
KPEN was the first FM broadcaster here in Northern California to transmit in multiplex stereo, starting in 1961. The owner of the station, James Gabbert, was quite a hi-fi enthusiast and he showcased some of the best sounding recordings then, beginning with his program "Excursions in Sound", which became "Excursions in Stereo" after 1961. He further promoted and developed his station into the mega-popular K-101 in San Francisco, and sold the station years ago, setting a record for such a sale in that market.
The other reel says that it contains a stereo broadcast of an organ recital at the old Paramount Theatre in SF in 1964, as I seem to recall now. This transmission took place between something like 1:00 AM and 2:30 AM on a given evening.
I sort of recall that event as an interesting one, as well.
While all of this was happening, there were NO rock stations on the air on the FM radio spectrum until about a year or so later, when KYA started broadcasting stuff on their FM Multiplex outlet. And, as history will tell you, by 1967-68, KMPX became one of the very first "underground" FM stereo stations in the country, feeding fans of rock music.
So, in all, it is rare to find such things in of all places, a recyling center. To find so many other potential interesting tapes is more icing on that same cake, as it were!
Very few people around in this area are that keen on open reel, as it seems to have become a very narrowly-defined hobbiest pursuit, kept much alive by the internet, frannkly and eBay!
So, there you go!
I will surely post a follow up on my discoveries. What I hope to hear are the old vintage radio advertisements, too!
I just hope that whoever this guy was, that he used a decent tuner and a decent recorder to capture it all!
I still have tapes which I made around 1966 and they seem to play just fine, thanks.
Now, if there had been a wall full of old tapes of KMPX broadcasts from '67-68, I would be really jumping around celebrating!
Thanks for your comments, too!
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