Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald In Quad??

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Replying to myself here, but oh well.
Went home to Michigan in the last few days in Dec and for the first week in January.
After the customary showing at Epiphany/Eastern Christmas dinner at the house,
I went over to Mick's house, since his wife was at her sister's for two weeks and he had the house to himself.

We talked some, I cooked over there for a few nights and FINALLY he takes me to his basement and garage.
I brought along facemasks for dust and debris and insisted he wear one as well.
Crusty old engineers like him of course hate to wear `em, but I said `I don't want either of us coming down
with Mick's Equivalent of Tut's Curse.' He chuckled and put `em on.

So he throws open the cellar doors with a flourish, and we're coughing and choking on the cloud of dust that was raised with the facemasks ON, so I comment `I hope (his son in law) is still a paramedic and brings donuts after the heart attack we are going to have.' He's laughing so hard now he's choking on that just as much as the dust.

So anyway we go through the cellar doors into the basement, and there must be thousands of reels of all types on shelves in the basement. I don't have time to pull `em out and read `em, but they go back to the 50's.

I tell him I'll take whatever he'll give me and he says `Take it all.
I'll never haul my big butt down here to listen to `em anymore, they might as well go to somebody who appreciates it'.

So I spend the next 4 hours emptying out the basement of tapes and gear, and then his daughter in law comes over with ter-duck-en. For those of you who've never been to Michigan or the rest of the Great Lakes, the dish is Heart Attack in a Pan, quail inside of chicken inside of duck inside of goose inside of turkey all roasted up together. We stuff ourselves to the brim, have a couple beers and find ourselves at breakfast time still sitting in the chairs we'd slept in all night.

After recovering from the feast, we repeat the scenario for the garage. Most of that stuff though is LP's 78's and recording wires, plus all the players which he says I can have too. My 8x10 cargo trailer is close to full, but I squash `em all in there anyway. I start to pull away in the truck and he looks so forlorn standing there like a little kid that I tell him to grab his gear and we'll go to my Dad's cabin for the weekend to go ice fishing.

Well, we never actually get out on the lake to fish, but he and my uncles and I all have a blast for three days up at the cabin just being men with no wives and kids, just like men did all the time in the 50's and 60's.

Then I dropped him off at his place, came in for a couple beers, and then it was time to go.
So we slapped each other on the belly and on the back like two football players, and I drove off, him waving to me, growing smaller and smaller until he was indistinguishable from the surrounding snow.

Four days later I'm back in Silicon Valley, now I just have to start dragging everything out and see what there is.

When I get time, I'll start posting tracklists of reels that say they are discrete 4 track or matrix-encoded 7-1/2 IPS for-radio-station-use-only tapes, and then get to transferring.

Hope everybody had a good new year.
 
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Let us know if you find any eye-openers (or ear openers! :D)
 
If you need a helping hand in any transferring, you know who to contact. I'd love to be able to add some gems to the station playlist on the internet station.
 
Well I'm now trolling through both the half-inch production masters as well as all the old quarter-inch radio-production-house-quad reels.
As far as the RPHQ they all sound the same, like they had college kids in the basement of the production house with hundreds of QSD-1's or 5's or 10's sitting there all night every night taping safety dubs of mixdown masters into ``quad'' for radio.

So far, nothing interesting there, since you can do better than that upmixing/unwrapping a CD mix in Adobe Audition yourself.

The half-inch is another matter however.

Most of it is 3-reel production stems, meaning basic orchestral/band tracks are on the first reel,
on the second reel the band is mixed to mono on one track and 2 or 3 tracks of background singers or sidemen are added, and
on the third reel the mono band track is laid in, the backgrounds are mixed to mono and laid in, and the last one is the lead.

So we have a chance to re-time everything back to itself and remix for true 5.1 if somebody has the time and interest.

Trouble is, being analog and with no sync, that's going to be a bear all by itself to lock up by hand in a digital editor.
See, with no sync like nobody ever thought about 5.1 in the 60's, plus it would take up a track,
and when you only have 3 or 4 to begin with for each production, they figured it wasn't worth it unless you were doing TV or film.

Anyway, everytime you record, you not only have miniscule speed variations throughout the number,
you have those same errors coming different on EACH PLAYBACK not to mention you have it different on EACH RECORDING session.

So if you have the Basic Tracks (BT) reel, each playback of that on the half inch is going to be different.
Now multiply that by how many reels you have your original tracks spread out acrost, in this case three.
Then you have to do the same thing for the First Overdub (1OD) background/sidemen tracks,
never knowing which playback is going to mesh the best with each other, and sometimes taking ENDLESS takes.

Then you have to do it all over again for the third reel of Second Overdubs (2OD), i.e. the lead vocal or soloist.

Which means, you have to work backwards, laying the BT reel in first, timing the backgrounds to that,
sometimes down to the word or phrase, then do the whole thing all over again with the lead,
sometimes getting only a word or a phrase to lock up with each single edit, and again, sometimes using HUNDREDS of takes.

BSN board is mostly for that, but they only want pop hits and other records or groups people have heard of.
Things like The Orange County Mass Choir who recorded one album for Dunhill in the 60's, nobody cares about 5.1 for that.

Or some psychedelic music called Opium Downtown (a supposed late 60's parody on Orpheus in the Underworld),
or outtakes from Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits (that horrible elderly housewife they got to sing 60's pop hits in an operatic style,
all off the beat and etc). and other equally stupid cuts.

Somebody could also start a fundraiser to send everything to Jamie Howarth http://www.plangentprocesses.com
who developed a way to use a tape's own supersonic bias tone, recorded at the same time as and along with the music,
and use that as the sync. Each song is about $5,000 to do a 3-reel sync.

But will keep trolling I got 900 more boxes to go through.
 
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Mrs. Miller outtakes?

I wonder if they sound better then the released album. I'd be curious to hear them at some point.
 
Mrs. Miller outtakes?

I wonder if they sound better then the released album. I'd be curious to hear them at some point.

Define ``better''.

As everybody knows, and as Mrs. Miller herself has said several times on numerous Garry Moore and Jack Paar and Mike Douglas interviews, they always took the worst take of whatever she did, and used that for the album.

She's also said that the orchestra leader would speed up and slow down and do all sorts of crazy things in the sessions while she was singing to make sure he kept her mostly out of sync. Since it took a few tries for the conductor to get a sense of HER rhythm and phrasing, some of the early takes could actually be a real record vs. a novelty, albeit it would still be pop songs sung in an operatic style, as if the nuns in Catholic school were trying to sing pop songs.
 
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This is a great story. Can't wait to hear how it plays out!

Wasn't Gord's Gold one of the WEA titles originally scheduled for Quad release, then cancelled? It's likely all of the cuts on that 2Lp set were 4-channel mastered and then put on the shelf (kinda like the rest of the Elton John SACDs)... what a find it would be to unearth some of that material after all this time...
 
Wasn't Gord's Gold one of the WEA titles originally scheduled for Quad release,
then cancelled? It's likely all of the cuts on that 2-LP set were 4-channel mastered and then put on the shelf
(kinda like the rest of the Elton John SACDs)... what a find it would be to unearth some of that material
after all this time...

There could be a test-pressing of it around someplace. People always throw `em out in perfect shape
cuz they don't wanna do the research to match the dead wax number with a released or proposed title.
I've gotten all kinds of great records that way. Some of `em I still don't know who or what they are, but I
keep `em anyway. Same with colored vinyl. I have things on colored vinyl I picked up and played that I'd've
never bought on a bet on a black pressing. I spin `em, they sound cool, and there they sit in my collection.

Marbled edition of Cass Elliot and Dave Mason
Blue-vinyl of ELO
Blue vinyl of Steve Miller
Gold vinyl of ABBA
Green vinyl of Bowie reading Peter and the Wolf
Tan/beige vinyl of the Bee Gees
Pink vinyl of Charo
Purple vinyl of Deep Purple
Green vinyl of CSN
etc. etc. etc.

And no, none of em are those crappy Southeast Asian pressings.

I've run across weirder than that, though, like the Mobile Fidelity of Janis Joplin's Pearl LP that's
never listed in the MF discography.

Or it could be an American Reel Society quad version of it floating around someplace.

I've found the craziest things on ARS reels in both stereo and quad, and good dubdowns too from nice clean sources,
no bin loop masters rescued after dubbing 8-tracks, cassettes or reels at a dupe house.

My Back Porch Majority That's the Way (It's Gonna Be) is like that. 4-channel, yes, but not quad.
Three unmixed original production stems and a distant mono angle makes up the 4 tracks.

I have the Chess Original Studio Cast from 1984 like that, but that's just the stereo mix off the CD for the
front tracks, and somebody's Proteus module reincarnation of a QSD-1 idea for the rears.

So you never know what's going to show up when you go to Michigan to relieve your ex-chief engineer of
everything in his basement, or buy 2500 reel to reels off eBay for a penny apiece plus shipping from Ohio.

And who knows what's still floating around in other people's basements and garages waiting for kids and grandkids
to think they can make a mint off of it, but will tolerate somebody who cares getting it out of their way.
 
First mixes hot off the press is Nino & April off 4-track half-inch production stems.

1. No Hair Sam (regular version plus an unreleased high falsetto version).
2. Be My Lovin' Valentine
3. All Strung Out
4. Can't Go On Livin' Without You.

Some are mono basic tracks in the front with lead vocals overlaid
and basic tracks in the rears with background vocals overlaid
and some are true stereo either in the front, rear or both

PM whoever wants it but don't crash my PM box with requests.
Let a few of the senior members get copies (Jon, Clark, Jonathan, Bob, etc)
and then you can PM them for it.
 
Yes,
Glad it's those guys, described as a senior is getting me a bit worried...:eek: but the discounts may be sweet.
 
That does feel like a bullet dodged to me!

Guess my QQ persona must of peaked during 2005 while product was still being released; once my update lists were deep-sixed I resumed my civilian status. Alas, he is with us no more.

Apologies, listening to the Mike Oldfield - Boxed, Tubular Bells pt 2 and it's messing with my mind... :smokin:
 
Marbled edition of Cass Elliot and Dave Mason
Blue-vinyl of ELO
Blue vinyl of Steve Miller
Gold vinyl of ABBA
Green vinyl of Bowie reading Peter and the Wolf
Tan/beige vinyl of the Bee Gees
Pink vinyl of Charo
Purple vinyl of Deep Purple
Green vinyl of CSN
etc. etc. etc.

And no, none of em are those crappy Southeast Asian pressings.

I hear you on those....

I have ones like:

ELO's Out of the Blue on Blue
The Marbled Dave Mason - Alone Together
Queen - ANATO on white
2 disc Deep Purple on purple
CSN's Deja Vu on Brown
Tonio K's Foodchain on Green
Hootie's Cracked Rear View on red
Elvis Costello's My Aim on blue
and many others (including picture discs).

In my late teens & early 20's I was huge on grabbing stuff like that.
(and yes, I played them too!)

Back then be it Quad, PicDisc, Colored vinyl, imports... I had to have it.
Anything but a standard black disc!
Now I have a hell of a collection and one wife that looks at me crosseyed! :eek:

-Bob
 
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Hey Nick, I hear you on those....
Who's Nick?
...Now I have a hell of a collection and one wife that looks at me crosseyed! :eek:-Bob

Anytime sex and/or relationship with wife/peace in the house becomes more important than music let me (or somebody) know.
Guys like me have been liberating collections and gear from guys both pre and post divorce for years now.
It's always the same, a gal starts feeling second place behind the music when she knew he was a musician/musicophile
when she married him, and now she wants to put her foot down.

Wives ask me what to do about their husbands and their music and stereo gear ``cluttering up their houses'', and I tell `em
`If you don't sit down and shut up, you better watch out, this ain't the 50's or 70's no more.
A guy WILL choose his stereo and records these days over you and leave you out in the cold if pressed too hard.
If you want to entertain your girlfriends with a luncheon or a soiree or other higher-class affair,
go rent a hall if you want to save your marriage.'

Those that rent the halls or find some other venue in which to play house are all still married.
Those that didn't, I have all their husband's records, tapes and gear.
 
Who's Nick?


Anytime sex and/or relationship with wife/peace in the house becomes more important than music let me (or somebody) know.
Guys like me have been liberating collections and gear from guys both pre and post divorce for years now.
It's always the same, a gal starts feeling second place behind the music when she knew he was a musician/musicophile
when she married him, and now she wants to put her foot down.

Wives ask me what to do about their husbands and their music and stereo gear ``cluttering up their houses'', and I tell `em
`If you don't sit down and shut up, you better watch out, this ain't the 50's or 70's no more.
A guy WILL choose his stereo and records these days over you and leave you out in the cold if pressed too hard.
If you want to entertain your girlfriends with a luncheon or a soiree or other higher-class affair,
go rent a hall if you want to save your marriage.'

Those that rent the halls or find some other venue in which to play house are all still married.
Those that didn't, I have all their husband's records, tapes and gear.

Actually, the Nick thing comes from another message I was typing and it accidentally
got pasted in somehow... it should have just said "I hear you on those".
It's gone now...My Bad! :eek:

Trust me, the wife knows that she goes before the collection goes!
They were there long before she was and will be there after.
I ditched one wife, this one knows better! :D
Besides, as long as I keep her in Genesis and Gabriel stuff, she's cool!

Believe it or not... I gave my daughter instructions that if anything were to happen to me,
she got first pick and someone here would be contacted before
anything else. I'd rather see them go to a good home.


-Bob
 
...I ditched one wife, this one knows better! :D -Bob

And then there's the rest of us leftover-from-radio, too-fat-for-TV guys who have no procreation desires in the first place or any tolerance for wives in the second place who only sell their music and/or players for food to keep our bellies big.

Those type guys just end up with `disciples' who then take care of us in our old age in lieu of sons and thereby inherit the man's passion. It's how I got started, with the 450 pound 5 foot 10 terminally single, terminally smelly and terminally uncouth football coach at school who was also the theatrical backstage crew chief, the brass band director, the AV squad coordinator and the broadcasting department chief engineer.

After a few weeks in the close quarters of the technical booths with him, nobody noticed Fat Guy smell anymore, especially since whoever wasn't a Fat Guy to start off with had become one by then. So four years later, I graduated, he retired, he wasn't eligible for any in home or institutional care program, none of his family would tolerate him and he could no longer live by himself. So for the last 7 yrs of his life I took care of him while I went to grad school, and when he passed, I was the only one around to take care of his affairs. So in lieu of being paid for seven years, I got everything in his house, most of which I still have.

The way it's going, I totally see myself and most of my engineer-friends ending up in the exact same boat.
Or whoever my apartment manager at the time is, comes into my house after I'm gone, calls up the local charity thrift shop and they cart it all off having no idea or care to learn what it is or what its' value is.

Ah, the art of growing old in the engineering world. But it's nice to be the youngest of the original quadraphiles.
 
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