Acme Audio Motown DI

[frankie5string]

In the 1960's, consoles were not something you bought at a store. Everything was purpose built - everything was custom, and if it didn't work, you modified it - as there weren't that many tracks, it was relatively easy to do, and most everything was "modified" - folks were just learning how to do recording, and ads they learned stuff, they modified their gear so it would work better. It wasn't about any kind of boutique or snobbery stuff - it was just making it work as well as you could - if a better circuit or part came along, and you wanted to take advantage of it, you modified all 4 inputs on your "console". The Beatles recorded through electronics that were custom built. Motown did too, but that was normal - nobody had a production line making mixers.

That's partially true. Consoles often had common parts. Langevin and other companies provided preamps that could be assembled into whatever console the designer wanted to build. Even the big Columbia tube consoles were built with parts that were made by other companies. The Beatles REDD consoles were made with Siemens preamps - V7X series which were even plug-in modules. I have four from early 60s and a set of V72s preamps from Tab that went into a lot of broadcasting and recording consoles. Pye was another maker. Sound Techniques was another. One of the consoles that Motown used was actually a previously used WE mixer they modified - it was not made up from scratch for them.

The console designers were there to make the consoles their engineers wanted to use, and a lot of them were arranged based on their needs - but they still used a lot of parts made by other companies. But there definitely was a range of product, and most of the big studios aimed for names like Langevin, Siemens, Altec, RCA, Gates, UREI, and over time those names changed to API, Neve, Cadac, Helios... etc...

None of this matters or is germane to talking about the Acme DI which was really just to get the sound into the board. The maker claims they had transformers painstakingly reproduced to exactly replicate the original Motown DIs. They COULD have stopped there, but they went on and they claimed owners "...will find that it increases the sound quality in a marginal acoustic environment..." which kinda sounds like the same ad copy that the people who make Eclipse power cables use... ;-)

 

[micguy]

The "magic" was always the preamps they used and the electronics going all the way through to the tape machine.

None of this matters or is germane to talking about the Acme DI which was really just to get the sound into the board.

OK, but..... you brought it up....

 

[frankie5string]

OK, but..... you brought it up....

No, all I said what that way more than a DI was involved in getting those sounds, and it wasn't just the magic of the musician's fingers... The engineers did have a lot to do with how the bass sounded. But you know, a lot of people seem to have confirmation bias about a DI...

 

[byacey]

In my opinion, a good DI shouldn't have any particular sound of it's own; it should faithfully reproduce whatever signal is fed into it. Anything else is distorting the original signal. How would you ever know if the DI is removing something you may well want? I would prefer to use subsequent EQ if I wanted to chop off any spectrum content from the original signal; This at least allows control over what the end product is.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

In the 1960's, consoles were not something you bought at a store. Everything was purpose built - everything was custom, and if it didn't work, you modified it - as there weren't that many tracks, it was relatively easy to do, and most everything was "modified" - folks were just learning how to do recording, and as they learned stuff, they modified their gear so it would work better. It wasn't about any kind of boutique or snobbery stuff - it was just making it work as well as you could - if a better circuit or part came along, and you wanted to take advantage of it, you modified all 4 inputs on your "console". The Beatles recorded through electronics that were custom built. Motown did too, but that was normal - nobody had a production line making mixers.

In 1969, a big concert was held out East - Woodstock. The guys that did sound for that were working on a console (making one themselves - live mixing consoles just didn't exist). In the hopes that they'd get it working for the event, they shipped it to the site, and worked on it there. They didn't get it working - Woodstock was mixed on 5 Shure M67 mixers - 16 inputs max, the mics fed the first 4 mixers, and the outputs of those fed the 5th mixer, which mixed the "sub mixes". Woodstock was mixed with Shure dynamic mics and absolutely no EQ on anything. Then again, most records were also mixed with absolutely no EQ on anything. Those stories about Engineers preferring P basses come from this era - when all you have is different mics and mic positions (or a DI) to get your sound, having a known source helped you save time - in an era where studios were rare things, and their time was valuable, efficiency was key.

Cool story about Woodstock and the Shure M67 mixers!
In my first outing (as a know-nothing newbie) doing a live to broadcast feed, I used three M67's. Two for stereo from the stage and one for announcers. Those things are horrible noise machines by even the standards their timr, but it was what I has to work with and they got the job done. That event became an annual thing for us. We quickly became more sophisticated in our techniques. Over the years I became a know-nothing old fart.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

i agree. but the types of metal used DOES make a difference. Jensen goes for as clean and clear a sound with as little distortion as possible. Vintage Triad and UTC (what Motown used) had different tolerance levels back then (higher distortion was ok) and used different metals, some of which are no longer used for transformers. this is supposed to be the "magic" of that old sound. Acme tried to get as close to that as possible. FWIW i have DI's that i made with vintage 60's UTC transformers, and compared to the Radial (Jensen) and ProDI (cheaper Jensen) they are very different sounding. Also Triad and UTC were not "crappy" transformers, they were top of the line quality in the 60's.

I was lucky to have found one of the old A series transformers from the "Moly" period, for my D.I. build. It also had the mu-metal shield.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

Yes, I used to run the speaker out of my B15S head through the DI. No issues whatsoever. Would I try using it without a speaker load? No. ACME told me that it was fine to run up to 100w through the box. That was several years ago and have since replaced the ACME with a P-15.

Thanks. That's good to know.