Joe Farrell - Penny Arcade LP - stealth SQ?

Hi all!
I have a CTI release from saxophonist Joe Farrell called "Penny Arcade". I was playing it the other day and took notice of some odd frequency shifts in the mix. Nothing on the cover or label indicated the LP as being a Quad mix, but when I looked at the deadwax I noticed an "SQ" written on each side. So I decided to run it through Adobe Audition down to DTS and it seems to decode pretty well! Not a revolutionary mix, but definitely some stuff going on in each channel independent of the others. I'm relatively new to decoding and quad in general. Just wondering if anybody else noticed this. It's a great album any way you slice it. And I know CTI did quite a few other LPs in SQ - Don Sebesky's Giant Box is next on my list for conversion and that came out about the same time as Joe Farrell's album (though Giant Box did indicate the mix being quad on the label and cover too). Cheers!
---------- Chris

It's the last CTI SQ album, where the SQ master was used (probably) only for the WLP and the first run.

Wow! Cool. Thanks winopener! Maybe since it was the last SQ LP, CTI decided not to advertise too much about it being a quad release. Now I'm on the lookout for more quad CTI discs. Knowing which was the last one will help that process. A bit of a shame they gave up on quad so early, but CTI was on the way out as a company anyway by the mid-70's. Are there any other noteworthy quad titles from CTI that I should look out for?
--------- Chris

http://www.dougpayne.com/ctin6003.htm

see page 4 and 5 too; i did remeber badly, tought that Deodato/Airto was before Penny Arcade.
On page 3 the quads are Prelude and Fingers.

This weekend at the San Diego record show, I did find another record with SQ etched in the runout area.
This one is Esther Phillips - Black-Eyed Blues - Kudu KU-14
runout area etchings Side A - RVG SQ 98774 A-2 Side 2 RVG SQ 98774 B-2
As with the Joe Farrel record the Q letter looks like they tried to scratch it out
No apparent indication of quad, no promo or other special marking, appears to be a stock copy.
So this one is numbered just before the Johnny Hammond - Kudu KU-16 and Hank Crawford Kudu KU-15 and after
Grover Washington Soul Box KU-1213

I did listen to the Esther Phillips record, does sound like it could be quad. The guitar is consistently in the rear, most everthing else in the fronts.
Occasionally the back up singers are in the rear.
This is a blues record, not a jazz record, in case you would want to know what the music is like.

vinylguy4

W.O.W.!!!
Can you compare this pressing with a cd release, to see if the encoding is still ok?

......Or for that matter, have any of the CTI/Kudu LPs been issued on CD using the SQ mixes? John

I've had a couple of the CTI cds including Deodato - Prelude. To my ears, the cds have not been the SQ mix.
These have been reissued a couple times, so I do not know if each reissue is the same.

vinylguy4

Hi all, it's definitely worth looking at the dead wax in CTI pressings, they often used SQ masters and pressed as if it was normal stereo.
I actually think that's quite lazy and wrong of them but it means you can find an unexpected SQ delight every now and then...

The CD issues AFAIK have never been the SQ mixes - for if you think about it why would they be? The Special mix-downs for SQ releases were only ever deliberately produced for the manufacture of vinyl... so when they wanted to make CDs they would have gone back to the master tapes and / or used stereo masters?

1

I got another copy of both the Joe Farrell LP and also the Esther Phillips LP.
The Joe Farrell was a white label promo, Esther Phillips was normal stock copy.
In each the original etchings in the runout area were same as previous copies, the Q in the SQ looked like somebody tried to scratch it out.
But for these copies, there was several XXXX scratched over the SQ portion of the numbers.
These XXXX marks were not on my other copies. Strange the both records were the same, same XXXX marks.
Somebody definitely wanted the SQ portion eliminated.

Most songs on the Joe Farrell LP sound SQ to me, not so convincing on the Esther Phillips.
Possibly not all songs were mixed for SQ, so company did not want to
release as a quad record?

vinylguy4