The bad sounds of yesteryear.

[deeaa]

I've listened to music WAY more than I usually do in the last month or so, because my kid's kindergarten relocated and the trip there adds over an hour a day to my drive to work.

I've noticed it before of course, but now it's again striking me pretty strongly as I listen to a wide variety of stuff from Spotify and my iPod as well as occasional radio...

Recorded guitar sounds weren't usually too good prior to the 80's and they only really started to get pretty good at it in the late 90's, I think, with some exceptions. There are already some 80's records with pretty awesome guitar tones.

This doesn't apply to cleans/almost cleans...those were great even way back in time...but, honestly, does anyone really think Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple or whatever pre-80's sounds actually _good_ guitar soundwise?

I mean, OK, they sound fine in the context, as the drums and whatnot also sound anything but 'real', but if you just concentrate on the guitar sound itself, kinda 'soloing' it in your mind, and then compare to most anything recorded much later, well, those old sounds basically all suck and big time. They're usually very tinny, screechy, lack sustain, lack depth, have horrid buzzy overdrives, etc. etc.

If you listen to them with low volume and just one album for a good while, or on a boombox or some quite low-end speakers etc. they can of course sound great, have a great feel and whatnot...but, if you play that old music from modern equipment, and loud, and vary the material...I dunno, I just get a great urge to get to remix and reamp those guitars (and pretty much everything else too) and it might sound way better then.

Case in point I just listened to Zeppelin's Achilles Last Stand from Presence, and...would anybody in their right mind want a sound even distantly resembling that guitar sound today?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6S9oqJRclo

[Zip]

The tone is awful. The chops are massive.
My understanding, Jimmy used the dragon tele through a small tube combo on this. Probably sounded great in the studio :)

[R_of_G]

I can only speak for me, but I think Page's tone on LZ1 sounds fantastic. Always have, always will. I know in general what you mean, and in large part I agree, but there are always the exceptions that prove the rule. See also, anything by the Stooges.

[Spudman]

Sometimes a little different sound supports the song better and also fits the mix better. I love experimenting too. I don't have any problem with his guitar sound, but I also get where you are coming from. I know when I play live and am not recording I want a full, ballsy sounding guitar. What I've found in recording though is that doesn't always work. To me it's just another paint on the artist's palette.

[deeaa]

Yes, it has to fit the recording too. If you'd insert more modern guitar sounds only, then the drums and the rest would sound like some handheld stereo recorder material in comparison. And yes the chops are a different matter :-)

But, I think the main thing about this is - and I'd have to disagree with Zip here, I don't think it sounded any better in the studio, likely worse, as they did know how to use studio magic to make stuff sound 'better than live' at that time too just as they do today, also proven by some things like LZ1's sounds like RG said...anyway...the thing that strikes me is that still today people are looking at a lot of that old gear stuff as 'gold standard' because that's what they used back then. However, if you use such gear, you'll get sounds that I think will not fit more modern and better sounding recordings at all.

I think that it might be quite likely that _if_ the band had been in a studio with today's technology and Page had had an arsenal of modern gear at his disposal when recording this song for instance...I think he might have greatly preferred, say, a Mesa Rectifier and some ESP shredder for instance, or even a POD or something, being a young fella still likely excited about new sounds and gear.

[Duffy]

I can remember first listening to the first Jethro Tull album on a decent high fidelity stereo thru some very decent headphones and just being blown away at how great the recording was compared to the contemporary Beach Boys and other stuff. I must have listened to that album thousands of times and turned all my friends on to it. I also remember Led Zepellin 1 and even 2 and they were totally way above what you were normally hearing on the average album of the day. Even the Crosby, Stills, and Nash early albums were great sounding.

On the other hand I can remember buying albums and then seeing the groups live and thinking, "Wow, these sounds are great - they sure missed something when they recorded these.". I always thought that the recording, so called, engineers just plain didn't know what they were doing and didn't know how to record the complex sounds being produced by the really good bands of the late sixties and seventies. Gasoline Alley is a Rod Stewart one that they did a really great job on.

You should be able to find some decent old recordings as you listen to all this music. At least a few should stand out as well done, considering the era.

This sort of reminds me of when I recently read why McCartney produced the "Naked" version of Let it Be. He totally disliked the "wall of sound" that Spektor smeared all over the music and said that he couldn't even hear himself or his tone, nor anyone else's. He talked Harrison into letting him re-engineer the album from the original old tapes, even though Harrison liked the sound that Spektor produced. Evidently Lennon liked Spektor's wall of sound deal too. Anyway, I have both cd's and I have to agree with McCartney's idea that the songs sound better without the wall of sound, as they are on the "Naked" cd. This isn't exactly what you are trying to get at, but McCartney did go back and tried to use modern technology to capture the true essence of the songs, like they were supposed to be heard so to speak - according to McCartney at least. I have to admit, I don't like the "wall of sound" approach that you hear on so many recordings and I didn't even know it until I read McCartney's comments on why he did the "Naked" Let it Be.

I would have to agree that a lot of the music would sound better if it was re-engineered, especially a lot of the old classic rock albums.

Listen to a relatively new Buddy Guy cd and then listen to one of the real old ones and you really see the difference in the sound quality.

But I think a lot of it has to do with how well the music was recorded in the first place, using the available equipment at the time, and the lack of skill that a lot of the people doing the recording had - as compared to the skill and talent that some of the others at the time had.

Some really pitiful studio work went on back in the old days. I have no idea how bad some of the work is today, but I suppose there are more than a few half deaf people doing recording studio work.

[FrankenFretter]

One thing to bear in mind is the compression that is used in modern recordings. If you were to listen to the same music on a high end sound system using an LP (vinyl), I think you might not find the sound so anemic. I think that a lot of the character of the original recordings are probably lost in the compression process, which is why audiophiles still prefer vinyl to digital recordings.

[deeaa]

That's a great point as well - they were certainly mixed for entirely different reproduction systems than today's gear. I haven't really longed for turntables etc. but I've long thought that 80's hair metal and much of that era rock too sounds easily the best from a tape & a loud boombox, not a HiFi stereo. But yes, I'm sure LedZep would sound much more appropriate off an LP rather than CD.

I remember 1989 as the year when I first heard albums that were apparently mixed for modern gear, i.e. CD players...namely Aerosmith's Pump and Mötley Crüe's Dr.Feelgood...both rocked SO hard on my CD player and made all the other albums I had sound very weak in comparison. There was suddenly way more bass and bandwith than on LP's despite I had a pretty HiFi turntable...it was after these two albums that I sold off all my LP's and started getting CD's only.

But I still have loads of tapes from the 80's and they still sound great in my old tape players - I still have a deck in the basement and one in my wife's car :-) I was just listening to some Kingdom Come in the car a few days back :-)