Abbey Road's Studio 2 Echo differences on recordings.

[philc]

Something that's rarely thought of with early Shadows etc. Recordings.

Abbey Road's Studio 2 echo chamber was built without a damp course, this caused big problems as the floor on occasions became wet and the walls dripped water, Malcolm Addey, George Martin and other engineers have mentioned this on a few times.

It got so bad in wet weather that mildew and mushrooms grew on the speaker diaphragms.

In wet weather the chamber produced a duller sound than in dry weather so recording sounds changed. Sound leakage was also found as the chamber was right next to Studio 2 and the walls were thin.

Pre filters and eq were also a big part of it's sound.

The Beatles used echo chamber 2 for most of their recordings and it became an essential part of their sound.

Phil

[Roger...]

Hi Phil,

Fascinating stuff. That information must do wonders for all the purists chasing 'the sound'

Roger

[philc]

Chamber two was constructed not long after chamber 1 in the early 50's, It was acoustically and electronically designed, Malcolm Addey said that "What they really were after was Columbia's "echo" sound, so they went over to 30th Street Studio's to find out what they did to make those records sound so special, and actually, we got pretty close to it".

Another problem was that because the walls were so thin, sound leaked out to the surrounding neighbourhood, George Martin recalled "The curious side of it was the particular effect of this escaping sound, It would come out of the echo chamber, go straight up in the air and the, weather, and possibly architectural conditions, land again about a mile away in Swiss Cottage (Another suburb one mile North of London).

Another thing that didn't help was porters and musicians going out to the pub on a tea break and leaving the doors propped open.

When George Martin took on the Beatles "Anthology" project in the 1990's, he decided to use as much vintage gear as was possible, this included the chamber but it had been neglected for many years, so they set about resurrecting it.

Extra walls were built to improve sound isolation, this made the chamber slightly smaller changing the acoustics slightly. The walls were covered with glazed tiles and sewer pipes were obtained to replace the originals, but they couldn't find glazed ones as the originals, so they were painted with gloss paint.

The chamber was once again functional but the delay time and overall sound were slightly affected by the construction and the filters and eq unit's were not available which had always been such an integral part of the chamber system in the 1950's and 1960's.

Phil