Re: [ARSCLIST] Capitol's recording studios

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Capitol Studios correction -- their NYC facility was definitely open by 1954
because a couple of the awesome Brown and Roach albums were made there for
Emarcy/Mercury. And they built their famous Capitol Tower studio in L.A. in
the early 60's. There's a very good article about the Tower's design and
construction in the AES Journal from the time it opened, of particularly
interest is the design and construction of the famous echo chambers that are
still used today (and leased out to other studios via remote-phone
connections from time to time). One can find and purchase the article online
at the AES website. Capitol did have a studio in L.A. before the Tower was
built because there was a Radio & TV News story about the console design in
1951. I believe all those 1950's Frank Sinatra albums were done at that
studio. Capitol was the first studio to take delivery of Ampex's 3-track
1/2" tape machines in 1955. They mainly did recording with orchestra on 2
tracks and voice on the separate track and would mix 3-2 or 3-1, depending
on the era (mono or stereo). I don't think they did many studio recordings
of what you'd call "3-channel stereo" but they did do some classical field
recordings that way, with their 3-track Ampex 300 packed into a Volkswagen
bus. Irv Joel was the engineer on those. If I recall the AES Journal article
about the Capitol Tower, they had a very flexible and unique console when
they opened, maybe one of the first all-solid-state jobs.

-- Tom Fine