First off the going price for an Ampex ATR 100 2 track, 1/4 inch recorder in "good condition" is about $ 2,500.00. There's little reason to pay any more for one.... yet there's listing after listing of these machines for 3,500 and up.... hummmmm.....

next I've seen an add for an Ampex MR 70 machine for $ 14,000.00 !!!! Now there ain't no way that a 2 track is worth 14 grand.... sure it's not readily found, but it isn't god's gift to recording and won't make your recording sound that much better....... Hummmmmm......

There's a "feeding frenzy" going on with older "vintage" equipment. Don't get suckered into it. There's no reason on earth why a LA-2 compressor/limiter should go for over 3 grand, except that it's somewhat rare. It won't make your recordings sound any better than they do without it. Truly... if ya can't make good sounding recordings without lots of weird and hard to find equipment, ya gotta ask yourselves if you're really making any good sounding stuff at all....

Listen to the "old" records..... like vintage Sinatra, or most of the records recorded in the 60's. Get Donavan's "Season of the Witch" recorded in the 60's.... listen to the vocal and the in-your-face-guitar.... can you do better????

Those great sounding records used less equipment than you already have.... yet they sound so damn good don't they? So Why is it that these ancient things sound better than the stuff you're putting out???

ahhh that's the question.... well I worked at CBS records in the middle 70's and got to see some of the great recording engineers in action. They didn't have tricks, they simply worked with good musicians who could PLAY and the engineers just tried to capture what was going on in the studio. We had "vintage gear" because we had the latest then-available stuff. Nothing was special or magic. What was magic though, was that we didn't allow the musicians to record their parts independently of the rest of the band.... it was all done together. There were few over-dubs, and you couldn't go in and punch in for a few notes here and there..... if a solo was bad, you re-played the entire solo until you got it right. And we knew that to sound "loud and big" you had to contrast yourself against "silence".

Too often "today's" music and engineer is overwhelmed with filling every space with something..... yet it's spaces in music that define the apparent loudness of the next section. I was driving in my van between jobs and the "Brian Jonestown Massacre" came on.... sounded "mushy" but somewhat OK..... then good ol' KUSF followed it with Donovan's "Season of the Witch".... huge guitar, in your face vocal, great overall sound. Why? because of the space allowed between the notes, the "open-ness". Listen and learn from the great sounding recordings of the 40's, 50's and 60's.... they had far less quality equipment than even the smallest studio thesedays has.....