[Vintage-Audio] Re Remastering the Nashville Brass Vinyl

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Hi All,

For those of you who wrote me to ask about the Danny Davis and Willie Nelson 
Nashville Brass vinyl album: Yes, it has vocals. I checked all the songs and 
Willie Nelson is singing on all of them. Personally, I do not care for this, 
as I have always associated Danny Davis with being a strictly instrumental 
Artist. I am 'not' opposed to Willie Nelson, I just do not think the two 
flavors mix well. Sort of like Herb Alpert and his TJB having Nancy Sinatra 
singing "These Boots Are Made For Walking" to twin horns with a Mexican beat 
overtone!

Having said this, the album is still very good. It is darn hard to produce a 
truly 'bad' album out of the RCA Nashville Studio B with their absolutely 
awesome audio engineers who know absolutely how much reverb to add at 
exactly the right time and in precisely the correct place. Then factor in a 
'house' band that consists of some of the best Artists on the planet playing 
their legendary instruments of choice. Floyd Cramer on piano, Chet Atkins on 
guitar, Boots Randolph blowing a sax, Charlie McCoy making that harmonica 
talk etc. Now throw in a vocalist with less talent then I have, not hard to 
do, as the two things this human can not do are stay in key and draw 
artistically without using text captions to identify what the object I drew 
is! Even a poor vocalist would still sound decent because of the incredible 
engineers and spectacular musicians and vocalist background groups! However, 
even this legendary studio might have great difficulty making the Barfing 
Dogs version of "Jingle Bells" tolerable for more then one time during the 
month of December!

I am working on remastering all three vinyl albums this weekend. If all goes 
well, and I always expect it will not, I will have the remastered songs on 
DAT by Sunday evening. Then on Monday I will burn the three Master CDS.

No, I am not a pesimistic person. I am a realist. My philosophy is; "Hope 
for the best and expect the worst. That way you will never be disappointed!"

I purchased all of them "new" and still sealed. I have played all of them 
completely through and listened for any out of the record jacket sleeve 
flaws. A few, but I think my electronic Magic can make them vanish. When you 
have dabbled with audio recording and sound reproduction for forty-four 
years as I have, you have to learn some tricks of the trade, even if you try 
to avoid them!

It always angers me that a brand new vinyl album being played for the first 
time suddenly lets loose with a loud POP that frequently results in a Fruit 
Of The Loom moment to change underwear in! Then there are those brand new 
sealed albums that have more surface scratches on them then a friend of 
mines car after he tried to buff that wax haze off using #6 sandpaper 
instead of #600! What do these record pressing facilities have for audio 
quality control people? Tone deaf dead swamp stumps?

I will let you know how the remastering efforts go. Keep your fingers 
crossed and your stylus lint free.




Duane Fischer, W8DBF - WPE8CXO
E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net