Classic Hifi Care

If there's a downside to the abundance of great music all around us, it's that sometimes we forget about really good stuff. On our public radio Sat. morning request show, somebody asked for Les Paul & Mary Ford doing "How High the Moon." It's one of those bits of excellence. It elevates the listener.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkGf1GHAxhE

This kinescope includes a shot of Les's tape recorder (Magnecord?) multiplying Mary.

Chris Campbell

Les was an instrumental genius. The first great electric guitarist and experimenter. He was active to the end. I seem to remember he was still doing sets at Birdland in NYC until covid shut down everything.

Not sure that's a magnecord.

I have an album of them, and that piece is on the album. Great music!

Bill

I have the 10" record with that song and a few other of their hits

Paul used Ampex equipment. He had a multi input system that would record a separate track for whatever end item recording, unlike these Ampex units shown in the Omnibus interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLhNoFElp0

Les Paul had a pair of Altec Lansing 820 speakers that got sold at an auction about 10 or so years ago. I don't remember what variation they were. I had a pair also but foolishly sold them. They were the best speakers I have ever heard.

https://soundslikefunaudio.com/altec-820c/

Wow, those are quite the speakers, Danny, and you had a pair. They look like they should be in a theater.

Bill

They were huge Bill. I think they weighed over 200 lbs. each. You would think that with two 15" woofers they would be bass monsters but they weren't. They did have good bass though. They weren't 100% matching but they were close. They were made in the mid 50s and most likely purchased separately for mono systems.

Those Ampex recorders in the video were model 401's. An early attempt at the art, it 'pushed' the tape thru the heads with the capstan ahead of the headstack.

It used one motor for the capstan, and one motor on gimbals to control both take-up and supply reels, moved by solenoids. This was troublesome down the road, as it provided the variable tension to keep the tape in contact with the heads. Many 401's were discarded when the 350 came out.

The 401 had an incredibly fast rewind speed of 45mph, less than a minute for a 3600' reel.

I witnessed the boss at a radio station I used to work at lose the tip of his right social finger to a 10-1/2" metal reel before giving it time to stop after hitting the stop button... :shock:m

Ouch!

The first time I heard a young Roy Clark play was on the Les Paul and Mary Ford TV show. Roy Clark might have been in his late 'teens then, but he held his own with Les Paul.

There was an excellent bio of Paul on the series American Masters. It went into some detail on his experiments with amplified "guitars" and showed his home studio and equipment. Also a lot of his long career and other successes.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0882111/?ref_=ttep_ep3