Rubber Soul

[Mr. Scott]

Yeah, post more stuff!!! I'm totally enjoying the articles. The Yellow Submarine one was really interesting. Good timing too, I've been on a full-on Beatles kick the past month or so. Whatever else you wanna post, I'm ready for it...

[mcconnellsteve]

My suggestion to get your feet wet would be to record something on a mono track, plugin the 'Short Delay II (mono/stereo),' leave inputs at '0,' set both 'mix' numbers at 100%, put both 'LPF's (that's Low Pass Filter) at 12k, left delay at '0,' right delay at 20.0 ms, and depth, rate and feedback all at '0.' Put on headphones and enjoy.

radiomoo -- i loved this tip!! tried it w/a lead vocal and think instead i'm going to test it out on some backing vocals that are all mono tracks but in different parts of the stereo field.

am also loving all the background info. that website you posted was fantastic! great insights -- keep 'em coming!

steve

[RadioMoo]

OK. Here's something related to the Mobile Fidelity Beatles collection:

http://www.deadwaxcafe.com/vzone/beatles.asp

When I read this, I HAD to email Stan Ricker, the gentleman who cut the lacquers for these albums; here is his reply:

"THANKS FOR YOUR CONCERNED EMAIL-----------

WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS IS LARGELY TRUE--------THE EVALS WERE
DONE BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN ME, WITH A HEARING PROBLEM, ON A
REALLY POOR SYSTEM, WHILE EVALUATING SOFT LACQUER REFERENCE-DISKS, RATHER THAN THE SUPER-HARD JVC VINYL------------

SOME ALBUMS HAD TREBLE BOOST, SOME HAD BASS BOOST, NOT ALL HAD EITHER OR BOTH, SOME HAD TREBLE AND/OR BASS ROLL-OFF-----

MY OWN PERSONAL MOFI FAVORITES---------NOT BEATLES------ARE THE VERY EARLY MOFI RELEASES--UP TO ABOUT # 010 OS SO, WHERE I WASN'T SECOND-GUESSED BY SOME MANAGEMENT MASTERING-ENGINEER-WANNABE;-----THE SAME SITUATION EXISTS TODAY WITH
THE SO-CALLED "NEW MOFI"---------

SORRY FOR THE CRUMMY NEWS---TRY TO HAVE A GOOD DAY---I AM!

CHEERS,

STAN"

IMHO, Abbey Road is the worst: it's been pushed up about seven db at 3.5k!!!!! And the low end is just about as bad. Still, they're the best; if you have the ears and the testicular fortitude, you can correct some of the bigger offenders and archive them elsewhere for your own private enjoyment, not to be sold, broadcast or shared. Moo.

[RadioMoo]

I've heard that they had used a speaker as a microphone for Paul's bass- How about that?

I was still after that really great bass sound, because I had been listening to Motown records and stuff, and thinking "Wow, if only we could get this …," realizing partially at the time that it was the musicianship, and the players and the technique of stuff which wasn’t available as such in England, that was part and parcel of it all. So I think it was Paperback Writer that I decided, well, I’m going to really make a stamp on this, and I used a loudspeaker as a microphone. And my theory was, well, what a loudspeaker can push out it can certainly take back in. So I just reversed the leads and used the speaker as a mike, and that was the bass sound for the Paperback Writer single, which was really, for its time, incredible. No one had heard the power of a bass, certainly on an English record like that. - Geoff Emerick

[max cooper]

Here's a link to a Mix article on Abbey Road:

****

Also, somewhere I have an article about using a speaker for a kick mic. I'll look for it. It's a good technique and it's used more than you might think.

[Icabod]

max,
did you ever find that link about using a speaker as a mic?
I want to try this idea. I am wondering about the quality of the speaker.
Will a Radio Shack cheapie do? I noticed that the Yamaha version of this is only a 6 1/2".
I did a search on the DUC, but I couldn't find anything.
Worst case, I'll just get some old home speakers and play around.
Cheers!
G

[paulisdead]

I thought I'd add to this old thread since I was looking this subject up anyway.

As it's been stated here, the currently CD/digital/stereo vinyl versions of Rubber Soul are still sourced from George Martin's 1980's remix. In 1987, both Help! and Rubber Soul were remixed for the initial release of the Beatles albums on CD.

These new mixes are quite controversial among fans as the original 1965 mono and, to an extent, the stereo mixes of those albums were quite "dry". Rather than using the echo chamber at Abbey Road, Martin did the mixes at AiR Studios, London. It has been said on a number of forums that digital reverbs were used on those albums.

This site here has a list of some of the vintage gear found at AiR Studios.

https://www.vintagedigital.com.au/air-studios/

Some of the reverbs from that '87 remix period listed include:

• Sony DRE-2000
• Lexicon 224X - https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/r...xicon-224.html
• Yamaha REV5
• Yamaha REV7 - Yamaha samples here: https://www.vintagedigital.com.au/ya...now-available/

They did also have an EMT 140 Plate Reverb (which, of course isn't digital) - https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/reverbs/emt-140.html

Since the date of the OP's post, we now have the Abbey Road Waves bundles for emulating the chamber reverb used on the 1965 mixes.

As a postscript: the whole reason we still listen to the 1987 remix is due to misguided respect to George Martin by the mastering engineers of the 2009 Remasters.

http://webgrafikk.com/blog/uncategorized/1987-cd-mixes/

Giles Martin: Rubber Soul and Help! were remixed by my dad in 1988 or ’87 for CD. And when we did “Love”, we got to do Yesterday, and I couldn’t understand why there were so much echo and reverb on the voice ’cause it was very non-Beatles. And it was only when I came back and I was listening to the remasters I asked “how come this is the case?” and they said “well we are remastering the eighties versions of [Rubber Soul and Help!]” and I said “why aren’t we remastering the originals, we should remaster what came out then [in 1965]?”
—
And they said “Well, your father wouldn’t be very happy with us not remastering the versions he did in the eighties.”
So I spoke to my dad and I asked “Do you mind if they remaster the sixties version?” and he went “I don’t even remember doing them in the eighties!”