B.B. King - L.A. Midnight Q8

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I would say swap the Right Channels.

First I've heard of that particular error for a GRT tape...all the ones in my collection have the lefts swapped. I guess they really couldn't come up with some standard for labelling the channel positions on the master tape box.
 
That is of course, unless they wanted drums in the rears and horns up front?? God, now I'm second-guessing myself.....

'cuz then Swapping LEFTS would put the studio chatter in the fronts, Horns in the Front for "Sweet Sixteen", drums in the back.....

Maybe swapping LEFTS makes more sense? If the original 4-track layout was LB-LF-RF-RB then our Q8's would get LF=LB, RF=LF, LB=RF and RB=RB.

Because obviously, the 4-track master did not have LF-RF-LB-RB.

I hate GRT tapes.
 
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Does anyone have the QS LP to decode? I would check right now but I'm away from my records for the next month or so. And of course it's possible the QS LP is a different mix entirely...the QS version of The Grass Roots' 16 Greatest Hits doesn't seem to resemble either Q8 version when decoded.
 
I just moved some more channels around, swapping the rights. Here's what that "looks" like. I'm about BB'd out right now, but will revisit in the next few days.

BB King Wav 3.jpg
 
Does anyone have the QS LP to decode? I would check right now but I'm away from my records for the next month or so. And of course it's possible the QS LP is a different mix entirely...the QS version of The Grass Roots' 16 Greatest Hits doesn't seem to resemble either Q8 version when decoded.

Sadly, this one did not get a QS LP unless it's unmarked....
 
I think the "clue" is the conversation between B.B. King and Earl. They should probably either both be in the rears or the fronts. I would doubt the original mix was designed with them on diagonals.

Swapping the rights puts them both in the rears. Ya know, why couldn't they just get it right the first time, 45 years ago! :)

Hard to believe that this freaking 8 track is from 1972 and it sounds this good. Shocking, really.
 
It really does sound great. I assume you NR'd it on the PC? And what deck do you use?

I used my trusty Harmon Kardon 8+ into my MOTU 828mk3 into my PC via Vegas. Ran it through WavePurity and that was that. No other futzing, EQ'ing, normalizing, Ozone'ing, or anything else. Pretty much what was on the tape with a bit of NR.
 
Just for shits & giggles, (mostly giggles), I popped in my Q8's of B.B. Kings' "In London" and "Guess Who". "Guess Who" is nice and discrete with B.B's vocals AND Lucille Front center. Just a twinge of vocal echo in the back. This leads me to assume whomever mixed this, did not mix the previous two titles.

So, I fired up "In London" and the mix is similar to "L.A. Midnight". It sounded a bit funny, so, following sjcorne's advice, I swapped the Lefts. This put Drums, Bass, Lead Vocal and Lucille nicely in the front center with a second guitar hard right and a piano hard left. The rears had low levels of drum, vocal and Lucille with Bass a little more prominent than the fronts. It also put the piano at about half the volume of the front in back left and the secondary guitar half volume of front in the back right. When horns kicked in, the were mostly in the back with the echo following in the front.

Leaving my cables swapped, I fired up "L.A. Midnight" for a listen. Much like "In London", the mixes will change from song to song. Some feature drums in the front, some in the back. But always in adjacent pairing.

So, Let's swap lefts instead. It makes it sound better, and sjcorne was correct.
 
Just for shits & giggles, (mostly giggles), I popped in my Q8's of B.B. Kings' "In London" and "Guess Who".

Awesome, thanks for checking this out. I have Guess Who and L.A. Midnight on LP (both are unmarked QS) and I need to revisit them.

The quad discography lists another B.B. King quad release, To Know You Is To Love You, as Q8 only. Do you not also have this one? Must be pretty rare then...
 
Q-Eight, thanks for your comment on this title. It was originally listed in the 1st edition of Quad Inc. and has remained until this day. At that time titles were included from advertisements and sales sheets and some vetted by the second edition as not being released.
I started this thread
Requesting Updates for the NOT RELEASED Quad Discography
If you have any other suspicions of the existence of a title I would appreciate mentioning it there.
I will add a foot note below that title in the recent update of the popular list and if nothing comes to light by the next update, it will be moved to the NOT RELEASED list. I too doubt it's existence and have received some flak in the past for trying to weed out titles that by this time have not appeared. Some folks thought it was premature of me to even ask as it might appear SOMEDAY! Some of us have been doing this along time and if it has not shown up by now, it is time to go to another page.
 
Leaving my cables swapped, I fired up "L.A. Midnight" for a listen. Much like "In London", the mixes will change from song to song. Some feature drums in the front, some in the back. But always in adjacent pairing.

So, Let's swap lefts instead. It makes it sound better, and sjcorne was correct.
Has a thread been started on swapping Q8 channels? I seem to recall posting some titles I was aware of, one the came to mind was Steve Millers-Fly Like an Eagle and I recall the Grass Roots C & H versions being mentioned.
 
Has a thread been started on swapping Q8 channels? I seem to recall posting some titles I was aware of, one the came to mind was Steve Millers-Fly Like an Eagle and I recall the Grass Roots C & H versions being mentioned.

There's a few old threads- one is specifically for GRT and the other is more for modern optical media. I think the majority of the GRT "C" tapes have the lefts swapped, likely because they would label the channels on their duplication masters in a weird order and the engineer wouldn't bother to rearrange wires.
 
great thread! the B.B. King Quads don't seem to have been talked about much over the years!
i have a vague recollection of the iTunes of "To Know You Is To Love You" being fairly surround-y thru PLII Music but it was years ago. i'll pick up the old LP and see if its QS encoded by stealth.

do any of you guys/gals here have the Q8 of "Friends"?
i love the QS LP of that one and was wondering if the discrete version is also a lead vocals all round presentation, as the QS decode is.
 
do any of you guys/gals here have the Q8 of "Friends"?
i love the QS LP of that one and was wondering if the discrete version is also a lead vocals all round presentation, as the QS decode is.

Of course I do. Yes, this one goes back to having vocals in all four channels, however the vocals are noticeably louder in the front channels.
 
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