Phil Spector Dead at 81

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i am thankful i found a STEREO CD of the spector xmas record. it was on a small dutch label, "duchesse."
I found a stereo mix, too, and shared it around for years. Then I read this, from an interview with Stan Ross, Gold Star Recording Studios co-founder:

STAN ROSS: I hear stuff with Phil Spector stuff in stereo and it wasn’t done in stereo, [like] the Christmas Album. We did the Phil Spector Christmas Album, we mastered it – the Christmas Album – [in] mono. Phil dug mono.

MICHAEL FREMER: I know, “back to mono.”

ROSS: He never did stereo. All of a sudden I’m getting a pressing from England and I’m listening to the record and it’s in stereo.

FREMER: So they must have gotten the – was it a multi-track?

ROSS: No, but the multi-track is mono. You see what Phil did is – this is the big secret of what “the wall of sound” is. Larry Levine, who engineered all of Phil’s stuff at Gold Star, did mono on everything and ran multi-track, but recorded mono – what you heard is what was on the tape, mono. Phil always wanted to hear things together, not spread out. So even though the guitars were one track, the bass on another track, the drums on a track, whatever, the piano – whatever – whatever was separated was fine except he wanted everything mono because that’s how he wanted to hear it.

FREMER: Right, so you monitored it…

ROSS: So we took that and we kept the mono and we transferred that to one of the multi-tracks and added to that more echo.

FREMER: So someone got a hold of those tape elements.

ROSS: But they were all separate.

FREMER: Well, what do you think they did then?

ROSS: Well, I have a funny feeling that what they did, they overlaid new strings on top of the old ones.

FREMER: I wonder.

ROSS: They had to because there’s no other way they could have made that happen. The Christmas Album –

FREMER: Did they use comb filters on some of those things to --

ROSS: No, this is not – we’ve done that too with the gadget.

FREMER: -- which ruins records. Instead of one good mono-track you have two crappy stereo tracks.

ROSS: Yeah, it didn’t happen that way. This actually unfortunately, the stereo, the strings are really pure. I mean you can listen to one speaker and see how the strings come through with the rhythm in the other track.
Building Gold Star Studios, Phil Spector and Alvin & The Chipmunks Come to Play
 
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