anyone ever built a tube mixer similar to the RCA Living Stereo type??

[astouffer]

If you want to go further a 6ML8 will let you sum three channels

[ncdrawl]

RCA Victor's first two-track sessions in late 1953 and early 1954 were captured on proprietary RCA RT-21 1/4" 30 ips tape machines, wired to a pair of mono mixers, each dedicated to one tape track

[kmaier]

Boy, my historical recall is fading... but there were two top-notch recording teams back in the 50's.... RCA and Mercury (in the USA that is).

Lewis Layton was the recording engineer for RCA that did the Living Stereo recordings which followed their Monaural recordings. Richard Mohr was his producer and Anthony Salvatore was the other half of his team, IIRC. I'm not sure who did the mastering to disc however.

Bob Fine was the recording engineer for Mercury that did the Living Presence recordings, also following their Monaural recordings. Bob has George Piros, who was the mastering wizard who put it on disc. Also note that Bob and George did the Command Series of records with Enoch Light... my Dad had most of these and loved them... 35mm film recording with sprockets!

I'm pretty certain neither (team) used any mixers... just direct tracks into the tape machine. I think it was Mercury (Bob Fine) that did a 3-channel recording to an Ampex machine with a Mic setup they nicknamed the "Christ Pole" as it had the 3 mics spaced with the center one up a bit higher (simulating Christ on the cross with left and right sinners).

In any case, I don't think anyone has quite exceeded the work of these two miraculous recording teams since. The Chesky brothers succeeded in gaining access to the RCA tape vaults many years ago and brought the Living Stereo stuff back... while Wilma (Cozart) Fine, Bob's widow, was responsible for much of Mercury's living presence recordings coming back.

But in any case... no mixers, direct as possible to the tape machine. When I was involved in doing live recordings in the 70's we used a pair of EV tube mics with outboard power supplies... these were fed directly into a Crown half-track machine that we had tweaked in the shop... nice setup... wish I had it now... I can't recall who we used to do the mastering to disc however.... it was sent out.

Sorry I digressed.... the late 50's was the golden age of audio... maybe we'll get back someday ;-)

Regards, KM