19 Mar
2006
19 Mar
'06
1:02 p.m.
On Sunday 19 March 2006 04:42, Wolfgang Woehl wrote:
Gene Heskett <gene.heskett(a)verizon.net>et>:
I dunno, these were the usual corn fed Iowa girls where we grew 'em
right if you get my drift. I doubt if rain would have melted thier
sugar, but it might have damaged the bagpipes & sheet music. I was
only paying attention to the recording levels and the girl with the set
of 42FF's. The rest were just 38D's, average for Iowa girls. What can
I say, I was 22 and still single then. :)
I took one of them once to go record the SUI
Scottish
Hilanders bagpipe band, but it was raining so we all
retired into a 20x40 quonset hut. With the sound of about
15 bagpipes all focused at the center of that thing by the
rounded roof, I plugged that mic into the line input on a
pretty good tandberg tape recorder that could do 15 ips,
and had to leave the line gain control down at about 1.5 on
a 0-10 scale. I think my tinnitus & carhart notches
started then. But I also got some quite usable recordings
they used as promo's for quite a while.
Aha, so the scottish run from rain :) You happen to have an url for a picture of the Altec
M-21
somewhere? Can't find one myself. Love to read your stories
and recollections, Gene.
I'm afraid its been out of production for at least 40 years now. Its
cable was specially made, with maybe a decades worth of usefull life in
it at best. So I doubt many of them survive in anything but museum
settings now. It was shaped somewhat like a miniature baseball bat,
with the element in the knob on the end of the handle, and the vacuum
tube in the fat end. It was the 'gold standard' in its day, selling
for about $600 1960 dollars.
We have some decent mic's today, but I have doubts the best of the
conniaughts or nieumen's (spelling for both there) can handle the pure
sound pressures with the accuracy that it could. Rated 20-18khz +-2db
I think, unheard of performance back then. Some didn't like it because
it didn't 'sweeten up' their voices like their pet mic's could. I
always held it in considerable awe after that experience. I also held
the cable up as pretty good too after the governor rolled it under his
foot for 45 minutes while giving a speech one day without hurting it.
--
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.