A Look At That “Vintage Sound,” And How To Get It

Vintage sound UA 610 console image

A few weeks ago I posted a video of engineer Mark Linett speaking about remixing The Beach Boys and how it was to work with just 4 and 8 track master tapes. Since Mark has more experience with the recording techniques of the 60s and early 70s than anyone I know, I figured it would be a good time for an excerpt of an interview on that vintage sound that we did for my Recording Engineer’s Handbook.

Just to recap, Mark has won 3 Grammy’s and has engineering credits with the likes of The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, America, Ricki Lee Jones, Eric Clapton, Christopher Cross, Buckwheat Zydeco, Randy Newman, Michael McDonald, just to name a few. Having worked on numerous best-of compilations and remixes of famous 60’s recordings (The Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds Sessions and several Jimi Hendrix reissues, for example), Mark has the unique ability to compare the techniques of the past against those of the present.


Bobby O: Do you ever find that people are hiring you specifically to get that “vintage sound”?

Mark Linett: Yeah. What I’ve discovered is that a lot of records that I do are either intentionally or unintentionally trying to sound like the records cut at Western or Sunset or Gold Star from around 66 or 67. Of course in those days of 3 and 4 track recording, leakage wasn’t something that you worried about and was actually something that contributed enormously to the sound. The players were mildly baffled at best and you had these small rooms with everyone playing at the same time, so the leakage had a tremendous amount to do with what things like the drums sounded like. It wasn’t about a mic in front of every instrument and that’s all it picked up.  

Now clients want that kind of sound but still want some kind of control, so I hopefully try to isolate all the instruments in the event that if the inevitable happens and somebody wants to replace their part, it can be done. There’s a trade-off for that in terms of “playability,” but since most players are attuned to playing with headphones and the person that they’re playing with can be across the room or across the world for that matter, it’s really not so much of an issue.

As a result, lot of what we end up doing with room mics sort of emulates what that sound would have been if all that leakage would have spilled into the other mics. One of the problems with multitrack recording is we get very concerned about being able to isolate every sound, but yet have it sound really good when it’s all pushed up together, and that gets really tricky. You start to understand where they got the sound on those old records. It might have been only on 3 track, but it was pretty well soldered together using leakage to their benefit. Once headphones and multiracks came along, all that sort of went away because people wanted to have options.

On a lot of great records they had the vocal slightly baffled out in the room, but they weren’t planning on replacing them anyway.

I’ve heard all sorts of ‘60s sessions from Western and Gold Star. I did some things for Nancy Sinatra where I got to hear some out-takes from “These Boots Were Made For Walkin’” and that is a 100% live track, except for her singing. It’s just amazing. You think, “How can these guys play that well?”, and the answer is that the technology required that they either play that good or get somebody that could. Also, there weren’t a lot of guys wearing headphones in those days either.

Imagine most players trying to do that today. My personal feeling is that all this technology certainly has a place, but it’s so affected by the playing. We tend to get caught up in the technology and forget that fact. A few years ago I was hired to take a band into Studio 3 [at what’s now known as EastWest Studios] because that’s where a lot of Beach Boys records were made. The fact is that the band didn’t record anything remotely like the way that stuff was done, so it was really kind of irrelevant. Even if you did try to record the way they did, I not sure that it would work anyway because nobody can really play that way anymore.

Once not long after Pro Tools came along, I was doing a kids record where we did the basic tracks with an acoustic bass and live drums. The bass was in another room, but if you soloed it you could hear that there was a drummer on the premises, which was no surprise. I didn’t have Pro Tools at that point so they took it somewhere else to mix it. I got a call about a week later from the engineer mixing the project saying that there was something wrong with the transfers that we did. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “When I solo the bass I can hear the drums.” It never occurred to him that the two guys might have been playing at the same time in the same room. Because it’s now technically possible to do just about anything that you can imagine, everybody automatically thinks that’s what’s going on.  It’s kind of sad, really.

Do you EQ when you record?

No, I’ll use what I get from the mic. If I’m using the UA console then there are limited choices anyway because there’s only low and high at plus 3 or plus 6. Since I’m monitoring back through the API, I might EQ on the monitor side. What I’m always trying to do is make it sound as much like a record as possible even if it’s not complete. When I get it to a point where I like it I figure it’s going to work all the way down the line. I find that one of the toughest things to learn, and I’m still guilty of this, is when you get it to a certain point, to just stop.”

As you can see, vintage sound is more than just using the same gear from the era. The techniques were dictated by the limitations of the time period – limitations that we don’t have today.


You can read more from The Recording Engineer’s Handbook and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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