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Retail: $200.00, Our Price: $179.99
North American Version, 120 VAC
For other versions, see "Power Supplies" here

Notice for orders shipping to the EU:
This item can not be shipped into the European Union at this time due to WEEE / RoHS (environmental / hazardous materials) regulations.  This unit will be compliant in the near future, possibly by early 2007.

The History of Re-amping

Radial Engineering recently looked into the history of re-amping and were amazed at the response they received by asking around. These are brief historical accounts and letters they received. Radial thanks Frank Wells at Pro Sound News and Mitch Galagher at EQ magazine for helping them track down these folks.

Radial asked recording historian Doug Mitchell (1), Associate Professor at Middle Tennessee State University the question: "Who invented re-amping?" Doug gave them this reply:
 

"The process now called 'reamping' has actually been utilized since the very first days of recording, though it may not have been referred to as such until perhaps the late 1960's or 1970's. From the early days of sound recording, composers and experimenters have used techniques that include what we now call 'reamping' to take advantage of the recording process and expand upon its possibilities. In 1913 Italian futurist Luigi Russolo proposed something he termed the 'Art of Noises'. Recordings of any sound (anything was legitimate) were made on Berliner discs and played back via 'noise machines' in live scenarios and recollected on 'master' disc cutters. This concept was furthered by Pierre Schaeffer and his 'Musique Concrete' electronic music concept in the 1930s and 1940s. Schaeffer would utilize sounds such as trains in highly manipulated processes to compose new music ideas. These processes often involved the replaying and acoustic re-recording of material in a manipulated fashion. Other experimenters in this area included Karlheinze Stockhausen and Edgard Varese."

"With the possibilities presented by magnetic recording the process of what might be termed reamping was utilized in other 'pop' music areas. Perhaps the first person to take advantage of the process was Les Paul. His recordings with Mary Ford often utilized multiple harmonies all performed by Mary. Initially these harmonies were performed with the reamping process. Later, Les convinced Ampex to make the first 8 track recorder so that he might utilize track comping to perform a similar function. Les is also credited with the utilization of the reamping process for the creation of reverberant soundfields by placing a loudspeaker at one end of a long tunnel area under his home and a microphone at the other end. Reverberation time could be altered with the placement of the microphone with respect to the loudspeaker playing back previously recorded material."

"Wall of sound pioneer Phil Spector is perhaps the most widely accredited for the use of the reamping process and because of his association with the Beatles, is potentially regarded today as the developer of the process. However, Phil was actually refining a process, which had been utilized for decades, and exploring its possibility for use in rock music."

"The process of reamping is often used in film sound design as well. In order for sounds recorded in a post production environment to match the scene, it is common for them to be re-recorded utilizing a reamping procedure. In film sound this process is also termed 'worldizing'."

"The history of first use of the term 'reamping' is vague. It may have come into the recordist's vocabulary as early as the late 1960's, but I am not sure when the term was first utilized."

Radial then posed the same question to Bob Ohlsson (2) of Motown fame, (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Kinks, Animals, Donovan, Herman's Hermits). Bob kindly answered:

"I began doing it in 1968 shortly after we got the sixteen-track machines because for the first time we could separately record direct guitars, clavinets and e.pianos. I had never heard of it being done and am pretty sure I was the first to try it at Motown but I can't imagine lots of others weren't doing the same thing. It seemed like a very obvious thing to do in a world where electric instruments were taken direct primarily to cut down on bleed rather than for tonal quality."

Radial then contacted Roger Nichols (3) (Steely Dan, Crosby Stills and Nash, John Denver, Roy Orbison, Zappa) and when posed the question: "Roger, I know you have been re-amping for a while, when did you start using this process?"

"That would be 1972 when I built the re-amper we used on the first, and almost every Steely Dan album after that. We used it to play direct guitar tracks back through an amp. We were going through a lot of amps. The speakers would get tired or the tubes would melt or something during a night of guitar overdubs."

"We would go through one amp to make sure we got the sound we wanted, and then when the right guitar and settings were locked in, we recorded the direct signal and let the amp rest. After the part was completed, we ran the signal back through the guitar amp and it only had to last long enough to print the results to tape. I still have the box around here somewhere."

Interestingly, when Jensen® introduced the JT-DBE audio transformer in 1980, the application notes on this unit contain a complete paragraph discussing using it to convert low impedance balanced lines to guitar levels. This same application is mentioned in the Radial JDI direct box owner's manual and referred to as 'using the JDI backwards'. In the 1980's, the Whirlwind company also produced a device that could accommodate low-to-hi conversion using a transformer.

In 1994, Reamp® commercialized the process by producing a box that incorporated a transformer and a volume control. This allowed the user to adjust the volume at the amplifier instead of at the mix position. In 1996, the 1st generation Radial™ JDI was introduced.

The 1st generation Radial JD7 Injector was released in 2001 with a balanced output and input to allow re-amping and subsequent re-distribution of signals to many amplifiers. In 2003, Radial will be introducing the Radial X-Amp which is an active device that allows a pre-recorded balanced signal to drive two amplifiers at the same time.

References

(1) Doug Mitchell, Associate Professor MTSU Department of Recording Industry http://www.mtsu.edu/~dsmitche
(2) Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery Recording, Project Design and Consulting Box 90412, Nashville TN 37209
(3) Roger Nichols Mastering 11461 SW 93 St. Miami, FL 33176 http://www.rogernichols.com

Retail: $200.00, Our Price: $179.99
North American Version, 120 VAC
For other versions, see "Power Supplies" here