al mcguire

Excellent, thanks for posting. Al

There was a memorial service for Reggie in Nashville today and I imagine it was pretty well attended. This song featuring Reggie was played. Some days I miss living in Music City. The song is called Honey Bun. Honey Bun.mp4

Reggie Young's first hit record was Smokey Part 2 by the Bill Black Combo. The BBC were the Beatles choice of opening act on their first US Tour. Reggie played on some of my most favored records, the ones that got me through high school. I got to work with him often in my previous life and he was a genuine as nice a person as any hero of mine might choose to be. Session guitar players would argue over who stole Reggie's licks first. Al We were recording with just local people but one of the things we did was an instrumental and I was playing guitar. I tuned my guitar down 2 steps and then played it with a pencil ... like tapping out a rhythm, it was a shuffle (simulating the sound with his voice and slapping his leg in time) you know but not using a pick, and we did this little instrumental called, "Smokey" Pt 1 & Pt 2, and anyway once a month the guy from London Records would come down to hear what we had done and he heard that, we didn't really think anything about it, and he said, "Wow, what is that?!" Well anyway they released it on London Records and it was a Top 10 instrumental. You know instrumentals sold back then and so I toured with Bill Black. In the middle of this I got drafted and had to go to Ethiopia for almost two years and got out, went back with Bill and worked at High Studio. At the time, Young says, “The union had a trade agreement with England and we were the trade band for The Beatles. In Europe, we backed up The Ronettes, who had the hit, ‘Be My Baby.’ Lulu was there, and The Kinks.” The tour yielded great music, long jam sessions, and new musical partnerships. Young became good friends with George Harrison. On the second leg of the tour, he met a 20-something Eric Clapton (then a member of the Yardbirds). “He was a blues player and I was too, so we hit it off pretty good. We learned from each other,” Young says.

I think there is supposed to be another "F" in the acronym

Martin This has nothing to do with Zaxcom. It is analog and digital, and Nyquist doesn't apply to analog Apples and oranges.

The frequency response listed is for is for a Studer tube powered C37 4 track recorder running at 15 ips on 1960's tape stock. It is what it is.

nor these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_HK416

I didn't like the 500's at all. The 600 series were excellent.

I got to know the autolocator really well. Back it and stack it. Definitely the best value, $25k in the early 80's for a JH 24 where a Studer A80 would be $80k.

Jeep also came up with the Auto Locator which allowed control of the tape recorder at the mixing console. Brilliant device that was soon copied by all the other manufacturers soon copied in their own way.

MCI Electronics founder Grover C. “Jeep” Harned was a pro audio innovator, from the first 24-track recorder—a modified Ampex 300 in 1968—to the tape autolocator (1972) and commercializing the inline console. MCI unveiled a prototype of a 3-inch, 32-track analog deck in 1978, which never went into production, but showed harned's willingness to try new ideas. After earning a bachelor's degree from Mississippi State University, Harned joined the U.S. Army, serving as electronics instructor. In 1955, he opened Music Center Inc., a store catering to the growing hi-fi market. Harned soon hooked up with Mack Emerman, who had just opened Criteria Studios and had trouble with the facility's custom-built 16×3 console and ½-inch 3-track recorders. This “quick-fix” job lasted some 18 months, as Harned redesigned nearly all of Criteria's gear. During the early ‘60s, Harned built consoles, preamps and record electronics. In 1965 his business name became MCI Inc., and he focused on making replacement solid-state electronics for Ampex 350 recorders. Word about MCI spread: Harned got a call from Tom Hidley (then manager of TTG Recording Studios in Hollywood), asking if MCI could create 24-track electronics for an Ampex 300 that Hidley modified to handle 2-inch tape. That first 24-track went into service at TTG in 1968, creating a stir among competing studios and leading to a recording revolution. MCI showed its own recorders at AES 1971, and a year later, intro'd the concept of the autolocator. With its inline design, MCI JH-400 put lots of mix inputs into a small space. At the time, most studio consoles were custom designs, either created by the studio owners/engineers themselves or unique one-of-a-kind models made by small console companies. Based on the classic Henry Ford mass manufacturing method, Harned wanted use that “production” concept to build what were essentially off-the-shelf studio mixers. And rather than use the traditional “split" monitoring approach to mixers, MCI boards used an inline design. The credit for the first inline-style console designs actually goes to Dan Flickinger, who designed a number of custom mixers that put tape monitoring within the channel modules, but had track assignments in a separate section. However, the popularity of the modern inline console stems from Nashville audio dealer Dave Harrison (later founder of Harrison Consoles), who approached Harned with this new approach to console design. Harned and MCI engineer Lutz Meyer helped Harrison refine the JH-400 (the "JH" stood for Jeep Harned). The standardized JH-400s were revolutionary: They were standardized "production" models, yet with offered choice of user options and incorporated Harris 911 IC op-amps, thus lowering costs and simplifying manufacturing. The first JH-416 models offered 24 inputs/outputs with quad panning/monitoring, 3-band EQ and P&G faders. Options included a 32-input version, VCA grouping, automation and switchable peak/VU meters. (Click here to download a vintage MCI JH-416 brochure.) The JH-400 offered an affordable pro console to the burgeoning studio industry and five years later, a 1977 Billboard poll gave MCI the leading share (14.3 percent) among studios. That same year, MCI unveiled the updated JH-500 series, which offered a four-band EQ, more sends/returns and plasma VU displays. Harned sold MCI to Sony in 1982 and retired. He will long be remembered as a pioneer who made significant advancements to the state of pro audio. Note: A Website dedicated to MCI history recently appeared. https://www.mixonline.com/technology/1972-mci-jh-400-series-inline-console-377971 I logged many hours on a JH 416 recording console as a staff engineer. While it was innovative, it was not a great sounding mixer. Munchy, Crunchy and Intermittent. There is a pdf of the sales brochure below. JH-416 Brochure.pdf

My preset for over almost 25 years is to go with Glen Trew's views on these topics. Al