Cookie's Corner - #165 - Tannoy Gold speakers were playing after 20 years of silence..... was it a ghost?
From Cookie Marenco - Founder and Producer Blue Coast Records and Music
When I first purchased my gear for the studio back in the 80’s, I had no idea what I was getting into. Several decades later, I’m still using a lot of the same gear and loving it even more!
Buy Two Get One Free is still available at the Blue Coast Music store.. you site for high resolution downloads!
I was pretty naive about what I needed and trusted few good friends to guide me. $25,000 back in 1982 didn’t go far, but the good news is that most of the gear I bought then still sounds better than a lot of gear on the market now.
About the only thing I wasn’t happy with was the Tannoy speakers. It’s hard to know what things are going to sound like until you install it. The center picture below shows my set up from the 1990s in the then new control room. The Tannoy’s are the big speakers in the back. You can see glimpses of them with lava lamps on top in the other photos…. and a significant change in the number of speakers.
The original control room was much smaller and (like most) I hung the Tannoys in the corner of the room. I also had the Aurotones (or “horror-tones”). The Yamaha NS-10’s came later…. as did the Meyers (way in the back, in photo 3), the JMR Offrandes and NHT M-60’s. Not shown are the speakers in the other rooms… more on those later. In the current control room, I decided the Tannoys sounded better as a stand for the lava lamps.
Those of you in the know might recognized the Lexicon 224XL reverb unit, which even today is one of the best sounding devices out there and I still use it. It’s the white box in picture 3 on the console. The price of it was equivalent to buying two brand new cars at the time I bought it in 1986. The good news was Neil Young rented it so much in the first year I had it, he nearly paid for 3/4 of it back then.
One of his engineer’s, John Nowland, sometimes came over to my studio. When he saw the Tannoys, he offered me $10,000 on the spot. He said Neil was looking for a pair. My recollection was the offer was more than I paid for the speakers and I (stupidly) thought… “Well, if Neil wants them that badly, they must sound good.” So I kept them.
The Tannoys and Auratones shared a McIntosh amp but even after I said, “no” to Neil, I rarely listened to the Tannoys. When the JMRs arrived (and later the M-60’s) I removed the Yamahas (I had 3 pair) and disconnected the Tannoys.
They really were lava lamp stands…. until last week. I had been rolling our ambient music ( https://bluecoastmusic.com/artists/qua-continuum ) continuously for weeks on the Auratones to burn in some gear. Then one day I thought… wow, these Auratones sound really good! The sound has really spread beyond the speakers! I showed this to the crew and we were all terribly excited!
But wait a minute… on more thorough listening… it turned out to be the Tannoys were on disguising themselves as the Auratones. Someone had hooked them up (not me) and by accident the speaker switcher was engaged to turn them on. NO WONDER THE AURATONES SOUNDED SO GOOD!
So the crew and I were joyous for a moment that the Tannoys had revived themselves. For a week we tried listening to them. I mean, they’re okay. It’s just not a sound I’m fond of. I love the JMR Offrandes much better. Sure, when I thought they were the Auratones, the sound was impressive.
Next I’ll be reviving the Meyer’s speakers, but that requires an amp repair…. a heavy amp that’s hard to move so it’ll be a long time coming.
And that is my journey with the Tannoys. Do you have a speaker journey? Feel free to comment or write to me.
Thirty Degrees - CD, free with annual paid subscription!
The album is not available on any streaming services, but we plan on releasing a reissue in early 2024 and sooner at our Blue Coast Music Store. You can read about the restoration process from tape here….
If you’re eager to hear the album, view the 8 page booklet wth the list of credits, we’re going to offer all our annual paid subcribers a FREE copy of the CD, including shipping through the end of August 2023 or until the supply runs out.
The offer is only good for subscribers to Cookie’s Corner. We’ll be sending out emails to get your mailing addresses in early September.
If you’re a subscriber to Blue Coast Records substack, you won’t get a free CD but you will get a free download of one of the songs on the album, Hundred Years of Solitude, coming next week. You can sign up here for your monthly free download at Blue Coast Records substack.
As always, thank you for supporting our music and craft!
Cookie Marenco
Producer and Founder
On a couple of occasions I used the reverberant acoustic chamber research facility at the NRC in Ottawa. I was testing the noise reduction of a new audiometric test booth I had developed at Tracoustics in Austin, TX but built by Eckel Acoustics in Canada. After a full day of setting up the test chamber, including catching up with missing parts, we came back the next day ready to test. All of the speakers and microphones were set up, I went into the control room and found that there was no signal going to the chamber. No sound at all.
Trouble shooting began as did lamenting about it being the end of the fiscal year with no money left for repairs. After two hours, we discovered that an earlier users of the chamber had used their own amplifiers. The primary amps had been returned to their bays, but not reconnected
The sound of pink noise had never sounded so sweet after we were finally able to get measurements underway.