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Recording Metal On 100+ Year Old Equipment


crunchee

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Kinda gives new meaning to the term 'hot wax', especially when they had to put a lamp close to the wax cylinders when recording to warm them.  Funny thing is, is that Metal recorded fairly decently (compared to anything else) on this gear, because it was so loud:

 

Recording acoustics on the same gear left a lot to be desired...the playback was pretty feeble, even when playing guitars practically against the openings of the recording horns.  Makes sense that rhythm players back then often used banjos instead of acoustic guitars in order to be heard.   IIRC, keep in mind that 'electronic' recording wasn't around earlier (except maybe in the experimental stage) until at least the late Teens or early Twenties:

Wax cylinders could only record about two minutes of music (or anything else) each, so there was a lot of 'wax on, wax off' when listening to music on those way back when.

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Back then, recording was a mechanical process; the instruments and voices had to be loud enough to cause the cutting styus to deflect and engrave the wax (and later, shellac). WWII saw the invention of electro-magnetic recording, which eventually resulted in high fidelity LPs starting in 1949.

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