Armin Steiner in outtake from the film The Wrecking Crew talks about "Vegetables

[The Song Of The Grange]

I hadn't seen this till today and as far as I can tell it hasn't been posted on the board. Interesting.

http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com/premiumarminsteiner/index.html

[Shane]

Hmmmm.  I must say I'm unfamiliar with who Armin Steiner is, in relation to where or when he engineered for the BBs.  I wonder if this is in relation to the Smile or Smiley Smile version of the song.

[The Song Of The Grange]

Armin Steiner ran Sound Recorders studio. Parts of both the April 1967 and June 1967 versions of "Vegetables" were recorded with Steiner at Sound Recorders, so I am not sure which session he is talking about. I bet someone on the board knows. If I had to put money on it, I would guess the April 1967 sessions.

[Aegir]

I'm not sure why they had to put Vegetables on the floor.

oh wait, it's because Brian was really really high.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Armin Steiner ran Sound Recorders studio. Parts of both the April 1967 and June 1967 versions of "Vegetables" were recorded with Steiner at Sound Recorders, so I am not sure which session he is talking about. I bet someone on the board knows. If I had to put money on it, I would guess the April 1967 sessions.

April 1967
  4 - Smile session: Vega Tables ['verse' incl. vocals &'Sleep a Lot' - Sound Recorders]
  5 - Smile session: Vega-Tables [vocals - Sound Recorders]
  6 - Smile session: Vega-Tables [vocals - Sound Recorders]
  7 - Smile session: Vega-Tables [vocals - Sound Recorders]
11 - Smile session: Vega-Tables ['chorus 1' and '2nd chorus' vocals - Sound Recorders]
12 - Smile session: Vega-Tables ['insert part 4' (SR) and 'fade part 4' GS): 2 sessions -
        Gold Star & Sound Recorders]
13 - Smile session: Vega-Tables [vocals - Sound Recorders] [BW]
14 - Smile session: Vega-Tables ['ballad insert' vocals - Sound Recorders] [BW]

June
  3 - Smiley Smile session: Vegetables vocals [Sound Recorders]

Steiner owned Sound Recorders, and it was the second LA studio with 8-track capability, I think.

[guitarfool2002]

Here is a Mix Magazine interview with Armin Steiner, it fills in a lot of the details for anyone interested in the history or who he was:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_armin_steiner/

Steiner says his 8-track at Sound Recorders was "one of the first commercial studios" to have 8-track capability, I guess he means in Hollywood because Atlantic in New York was doing sessions on 8 track in the late 50's and Motown in Detroit had an 8-track back in '64. But the important thing he said was how he built his own from parts taken from other machines, and apparently that's what the others were doing as well. Columbia, he said, did a primitive version of joining two 4-track machines together without syncing them, and I had never heard that before in all the history.

Look at the list of credits Armin Steiner has...it's quite the resume. I'd say that easily puts him high on the list of those legendary studio figures from the 60's who everyone has heard but few know their names.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Here is a Mix Magazine interview with Armin Steiner, it fills in a lot of the details for anyone interested in the history or who he was:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_armin_steiner/

Steiner says his 8-track at Sound Recorders was "one of the first commercial studios" to have 8-track capability, I guess he means in Hollywood because Atlantic in New York was doing sessions on 8 track in the late 50's and Motown in Detroit had an 8-track back in '64. But the important thing he said was how he built his own from parts taken from other machines, and apparently that's what the others were doing as well. Columbia, he said, did a primitive version of joining two 4-track machines together without syncing them, and I had never heard that before in all the history.

Look at the list of credits Armin Steiner has...it's quite the resume. I'd say that easily puts him high on the list of those legendary studio figures from the 60's who everyone has heard but few know their names.

Really ? I mean, REALLY ?  That's been common knowledge in the BB world for decades: the liners of Sundazed's excellent Bruce & Terry compilation give some detail. Columbia engineers knocked up two custom 8-tracks from spare Ampex parts. Wasn't exactly high spec, but it wasn't two 4-tracks and Brian was using it from 1965, at Bruce's recommendation.

[guitarfool2002]

Here is a Mix Magazine interview with Armin Steiner, it fills in a lot of the details for anyone interested in the history or who he was:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_armin_steiner/

Steiner says his 8-track at Sound Recorders was "one of the first commercial studios" to have 8-track capability, I guess he means in Hollywood because Atlantic in New York was doing sessions on 8 track in the late 50's and Motown in Detroit had an 8-track back in '64. But the important thing he said was how he built his own from parts taken from other machines, and apparently that's what the others were doing as well. Columbia, he said, did a primitive version of joining two 4-track machines together without syncing them, and I had never heard that before in all the history.

Look at the list of credits Armin Steiner has...it's quite the resume. I'd say that easily puts him high on the list of those legendary studio figures from the 60's who everyone has heard but few know their names.

Really ? I mean, REALLY ?  That's been common knowledge in the BB world for decades: the liners of Sundazed's excellent Bruce & Terry compilation give some detail. Columbia engineers knocked up two custom 8-tracks from spare Ampex parts. Wasn't exactly high spec, but it wasn't two 4-tracks and Brian was using it from 1965, at Bruce's recommendation.

This is from the Steiner interview: Eight-track. Sound Recorders was one of the first commercial studios to have an 8-track. Columbia had done it, as I recall, by running two 4-track machines together, not even with a synchronizer — it was kind of all makeshift. But we actually built one. We took an Ampex 200 deck, that huge thing with big motors, built as a monaural machine, and, as I recall, we used Ampex PR10 electronics. The PR10 was two channels in one box, so we didn't have to have so many amplifiers hanging around. So, we added together four packages of Ampex 2-track electronics.

  Yes, really! Here's the issue: Steiner's exact quote said Columbia was running two four-track machines together without sync, so if your quote from Sundazed says specifically it wasn't two four-tracks, that contradicts directly what Steiner said, and Steiner's version of what Columbia did was the part that I hadn't heard before. So there is the story coming from the Bruce and Terry liners saying one thing, and Armin Steiner saying another. It actually sounds like Steiner described what Columbia did - according to the Bruce and Terry version - when he described how he Frankenstein-ed Ampex parts to make his own 8-track at Sound.

Adding it all up, it's hard to doubt either side, especially when Steiner remembers the exact part numbers after 40 years. Or maybe he just made a mistake in remembering ('as I recall', he says...) how Columbia got to 8 tracks.

And ultimately, combining this with the film footage of Brian and Chuck circa Fall '66 mixing to 8-track at Western, I think it kind of shatters the myth that Columbia was the only go-to studio for 8-track recording in L.A. at a certain time in history. Or maybe they were...

[Andrew G. Doe]

Steiner states "if, as I recall". He doesn't. Bruce was a staff producer at Columbia, and he set me straight on the matter several years ago. Terry was also a producer at Columbia (hardly surprising as his mother all but owned the company) and his recollections also contradict Steiner, who admits he didn't know for sure. As for his recalling the exact parts of his own machine, what's so surprising about that ?

As for the footage apparently showing an 8-track at Western in fall 1966, it wasn't a true 8-track, as explained in their inhouse magazine of the time. You couldn't record on all the tracks at once without some extreme modification. If Western had such a thing, then why would Brian go to Columbia at all ?

[guitarfool2002]

Steiner states "if, as I recall". He doesn't. Bruce was a staff producer at Columbia, and he set me straight on the matter several years ago. Terry was also a producer at Columbia (hardly surprising as his mother all but owned the company) and his recollections also contradict Steiner, who admits he didn't know for sure. As for his recalling the exact parts of his own machine, what's so surprising about that ?

As for the footage apparently showing an 8-track at Western in fall 1966, it wasn't a true 8-track, as explained in their inhouse magazine of the time. You couldn't record on all the tracks at once without some extreme modification. If Western had such a thing, then why would Brian go to Columbia at all ?

On the first part, I agree, and I said that Steiner could have made a mistake in how he remembered it. If Bruce says something different, he'd be a higher authority obviously because Columbia was his "home base" of a studio.

The second part, you've tapped into the same aspect of this which has been troubling me, the part that I believe several of us were trying to figure out in the thread about that film. This was my question as well, why did Brian bother with Columbia if his favorite studio, and the engineering staff who allowed him to be "hands on" and actually work the board controls during a mix, had similar capabilities?

Remember that the 8-track machine shown behind Brian and Chuck in that film shows all 8 meter needles moving as the tape is playing, which means there are/were 8 tracks simultaneously running as the film was being shot. So it remains to be seen what they were doing, but my guess at that time and still is my guess would be that was a mix session, and they were obviously running 8 tracks simultaneous from the 8-track reel of tape also shown in that clip.

So assuming Western did have that machine, or assuming even Brian had rented that machine, placing it in Western 3 on that piece of film suggests they did have access to 8 track in '66. I can't get past the proof of the 8 needles moving on the meters, which we can see clearly in the film. So the decision to track at Columbia...great question. Scheduling and availability issues? The preference of that room over Western or Gold Star for vocals-only sessions? A better place to record vocals in general after the instrumental tracks were done? Or something else entirely?

At one time, I think it was entirely due to Western not having 8 tracks, but at the time of that film it looks like they did.

[Andrew G. Doe]

You say 1966 - why do you think that ?

[guitarfool2002]

You say 1966 - why do you think that ?

This was all in that original thread, which I can't recall right now - It could very well be an early '67 session at Western, and I'm wrong on '66: First, Carl is shown reading a German pop magazine with Ringo on the cover that when dated would have been current in fall of 66, and if it lines up with when the Beach Boys were on the European tour Oct/Nov '66, they could have picked it up when they were on that tour. So assume it's after November 1966, at Western, and Van Dyke is there, and firehats are in the studio. The firehats could be or probably are a red herring?

Do you think it could be January '67 in that film? It would fit.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Sure as hell not the "Fire" session as claimed. First post-touring session at Western was on January 5th 1967

[c-man]

I'm really interested in knowing about the 8-tracks at Atlantic NY in the late '50s and Motown in '64...any specifics, Guitarfool?

[Tricycle Rider]

I'm really interested in knowing about the 8-tracks at Atlantic NY in the late '50s and Motown in '64...any specifics, Guitarfool?

Yeah, Me Too! 

[guitarfool2002]

I'm really interested in knowing about the 8-tracks at Atlantic NY in the late '50s and Motown in '64...any specifics, Guitarfool?

Yes, Motown had an eight track machine in 1964, constructed in house using other machines and parts. Much like the process described in this thread with 8-track machines at Columbia and Sound Recorders, the engineers working at Motown built the machine themselves, converting-adapting-using parts. That original machine is on display at the Motown Museum. I'd say a great majority of the hits from 64-onward were cut on this machine. And there was also one small tidbit in an article from well over 20 years ago that said something about Motown's send/return setup, or the number of busses they had on the console, or some triviality was a big part of how they got some of their characteristic sounds, but I really can't recall the details.

I can have more details on names of engineers and whatnot, but that's scattered around various books and magazines, old issues of TapeOp or Mix, etc. If there is an interest, I'll look for all that stuff.

Atlantic is more fascinating. Tom Dowd - by all means get the DVD documentary on his life, it's terrific - was an engineer at Atlantic, and got the Erteguns and Wexler to invest in buying an 8-track machine direct from Ampex in 1957.

1957!!!  

The only commercial 8-track machine prior to that was owned by Les Paul working with Ampex (he basically got their machines and tinkered with them, then they looked over his designs and adapted them or gave him what he needed...if I'm remembering that right), and I believe Les still had his original 8-track in his collection when he died.

So Atlantic got their 8-track, had it installed in '58, and began using it on sessions. Some of the most famous are the classic Ray Charles tracks from the late 50's, like What I'd Say, some classic jazz albums, Coasters, blues/R&B. Basically it's a good bet that if you see Tom Dowd's name on an album, and it's on Atlantic, and was recorded sometime in '58 or '59 (into the 60's), that was most likely the Ampex 8-track which was used on the sessions. And most of those late 50's Atlantic albums with Dowd at the board are simply amazing.

So apart from Les Paul's home studio experiments (and he was running 8 tracks very early), Atlantic in New York with Tom Dowd at the board (usually) and the Erteguns/Wexler financing and running the company had a commercial studio recording on an 8 track Ampex machine in 1958-59. This is why I always raise an eyebrow whenever an interview or article mentions "we had the *first* eight track studio...", etc. perhaps in Hollywood, but not elsewhere. Specifically New York.  

A disclaimer: I can provide more specifics for anyone interested but a lot of my references are in books and magazines, some of which have a coating of dust on them and aren't readily available, but I will definitely search if necessary. So a lot of that is in my memory of reading those and other things like seminars, classes, lectures, etc. where certain info was dropped. Not to mention the internet...so a lot of this stuff is out there with a few web searches, especially the stuff on Tom Dowd. I'll gladly try to provide any additional info as this kind of thing fascinates me.


(Minor clarification: Les Paul *bought* the first 8-track from Ampex that rolled out of their factory. He may have tinkered with many other Ampex items earlier in the 50's, but he actually bought the first production model for his studio. Tom Dowd's machine installed and used at Atlantic from '58-onward was the *second* Ampex 8-track machine. Those were the first two commercially sold examples.)

[guitarfool2002]

A fascinating piece of history related to the 8-track at Atlantic: This is a news item which appeared in Billboard March 2, 1959. It appears the cost of Tom Dowd's 8-track and other recording expenses caused Atlantic to raise prices on their albums! Notice the article mentions "the only other model" supposedly being at Capitol - now we know Les Paul had bought the other machine.

[Andrew G. Doe]

The April 1967 United and Affiliates newsletter announced in an article titled "New eight track recorder for United and Western", "After an engineering survey of machines of various manufacturer, they selected 3-M Company's model C401 with delivery of the first two units scheduled for early May".

Here's the recollections of Phill Sawyer regarding what some folk thought was an early 8-track at Western (circa 1966):

"But Western studio 1 was a new room; there was a new generation of recording console sitting in the studio 1 control room; there were new, clean, solid-state modular channel amps handling the signal, and, against the wall, the 3M "4-channel Dynatrack" recorder. Did he know what to do with all this? Certainly he knew what good recording was all about. But multi-track was a different animal. Only a few years old, 4-track recording was revolutionizing the music world. A new way to conceptualize the process of composing and producing was now possible with this new multi-track mentality. Some were faster than others in getting into it. Breakthrough 4-track recordings were being produced by many in the new rock world of England and the US, but not everybody got the point. The 3M "4-channel Dynatrack" machine had come to United and Western (all machines were shared between the two studios; the machines-on-wheels scooted back and forth all day and all evening). "Dynatrack" was 3M's scheme to provide more headroom, lower noise in 4-channel recording by using two tracks for each of the four channels - one set at a higher recording level; with the playback signal seamlessly switched (that's the trick) between the two tracks to achieve the desired result. It worked fine."

Thus, technically eight tracks, but practically, a four-track using two channels for each track... which would explain all eight needles moving.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

The April 1967 United and Affiliates newsletter announced in an article titled "New eight track recorder for United and Western", "After an engineering survey of machines of various manufacturer, they selected 3-M Company's model C401 with delivery of the first two units scheduled for early May".

Here's the recollections of Phill Sawyer regarding what some folk thought was an early 8-track at Western (circa 1966):

"But Western studio 1 was a new room; there was a new generation of recording console sitting in the studio 1 control room; there were new, clean, solid-state modular channel amps handling the signal, and, against the wall, the 3M "4-channel Dynatrack" recorder. Did he know what to do with all this? Certainly he knew what good recording was all about. But multi-track was a different animal. Only a few years old, 4-track recording was revolutionizing the music world. A new way to conceptualize the process of composing and producing was now possible with this new multi-track mentality. Some were faster than others in getting into it. Breakthrough 4-track recordings were being produced by many in the new rock world of England and the US, but not everybody got the point. The 3M "4-channel Dynatrack" machine had come to United and Western (all machines were shared between the two studios; the machines-on-wheels scooted back and forth all day and all evening). "Dynatrack" was 3M's scheme to provide more headroom, lower noise in 4-channel recording by using two tracks for each of the four channels - one set at a higher recording level; with the playback signal seamlessly switched (that's the trick) between the two tracks to achieve the desired result. It worked fine."

Thus, technically eight tracks, but practically, a four-track using two channels for each track... which would explain all eight needles moving.

Haven't we done this before?  I thought the consensus was that it was not a dynatrack andwe had to deal with the reality that there was an 8-track in Western.

[Andrew G. Doe]

So... the first hand evidence of the company newsletter and someone who actually worked in the studio at the time is to be disregarded for what someone sees in a few seconds of film footage some 20 years later and deduces ?

Jesus, I'm sometimes arrogant, but this is arrogance elevated to a whole new cosmic level. There's no point in researching any more, is there, because all that really matters is what people with no connection to the industry think.

Know something ? I think "Good Vibrations" wasn't ever released as a single at all, so don't try to persuade me otherwise with such pointless 'evidence' as an actual copy of the 45, OK ?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

So... the first hand evidence of the company newsletter and someone who actually worked in the studio at the time is to be disregarded for what someone sees in a few seconds of film footage some 20 years later and deduces ?

Jesus, I'm sometimes arrogant, but this is arrogance elevated to a whole new cosmic level. There's no point in researching any more, is there, because all that really matters is what people with no connection to the industry think.

Know something ? I think "Good Vibrations" wasn't ever released as a single at all, so don't try to persuade me otherwise with such pointless 'evidence' as an actual copy of the 45, OK ?

AGD, I just read the old thread and by the end of it you seemed to be as unsure as any of us what the make and model of that machine was, and our best evidence was only that the machine in the BB footage did not look like other identified Dynatrack machines, and the fact that it was running 1" tape.

I know how much you enjoy being angry, but I think it's recurring problems like these that actually make it more worth researching, and not giving up--building on what we slowly uncover and not reverting to the old-standbys.

If the thing is a Dynatrack 4-track, why is it running 1" tape?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

That thread is, by the way:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,10570.0.html

[guitarfool2002]

And the page of that thread with photos and this exact discussion is here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,10570.50.html

This is a 3M Dynatrack in use at Western in 1967:


This is the Scully-based 8-track machine being used by Brian and Chuck on two Smile-era sessions at Western:



Those are two different tape machines - the newsletter refers to a different machine than what is shown behind Brian and Chuck in those two shots. The deduction I made months ago comes from comparing the two and saying they're not the same, which is obvious from the film and the still photos. I stand by it.

As for the other comments, I don't understand what escalated it to that level.

[KittyKat]

So, there were two different brands, a Scully brand and a 3M Dynatrack brand, and it's possible that the studio already had an 8 track Scully before taking delivery later for an 8 track 3M Dynatrack?  I'm just trying to make sure I understand this correctly. 

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

So, there were two different brands, a Scully brand and a 3M Dynatrack brand, and it's possible that the studio already had an 8 track Scully before taking delivery later for an 8 track 3M Dynatrack?  I'm just trying to make sure I understand this correctly. 

It's hard to parse, but the dynatrack would have been this weird 4-track with 8-track capabilities, and according to the newsletter, that was around.  I don't think we have any timeline as to what showed up first, but you would think the dynatrack "4-track" would predate the true Scully-based 8-track we see in the film and photos.  But--this is still cutting edge stuff here.