"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:

Dave wrote
None of the Quad designs are suitable for pro monitoring use. Only
place I know that tried was the ABC studios at Teddington, many many
years ago. Under the control of a 'musician' rather than professional.


LOL. So a musician is not a professional? Normally pieces of
equipment such as speakers are chosen by a panel of both
engineering and production/artistic staff. I know that at ABC
(Thames studios after 1968), the opinion of the musical
director, Ronnie Aldrich, who was a good friend of mine, was
often sought, and his view highly regarded. Was he the musician
to whom you refer?

I don't know for certain since it was before my time there - but was
sometimes discussed round the coffee table.

Perhaps the story had been enhanced over the course of time. In
actual fact the idea was not a bad one, and had been tried by EMI,
CBS, Decca etc all about the same time. It seems that all reached
the same conclusion.

The other strange speakers
used were Tannoy Autographs as tracking foldback speakers - fed via 100
volt line. But those had gone too by the time I worked there. But lived on
in legend...

Those were the GRF designed by Guy Fountain. These were found
in almost every major studio in London. Just as you say, they were
used for tracking, in our case for string sections only. String players
liked them very much, and were somewhat reluctant to adopt the
single-transducer headphones, which, due to their exceptionally low
leakage, were preferred by the control room staff.

The GRF is now one of the most-highly prized retro Tannoys.
On the rare occasions when they come up for sale, they change
hands for huge amounts of money.


Iain