Recording; the Price of Memories

If you make a habit of salivating over vintage recording gear, wince at the price, and secretly wish you lived in the the 'good old days' when every recording studio was full of these fat sounding cool pieces of equipment, remember to include being born rich as part of your dream. Before the advent of the digital age and cheap consumer electronics, the phrase "I'm going into the studio' had a reverence in the music business. The recording studio was a remote unobtainable dream for most musicians, and for a very good reason. It was expensive. Really expensive. Studio gear was expensive, therefore, studio time was very high. In the early 70's, from 40-75 dollars an hour for a good local 16 track studio and well over 100 dollars for a national house was normal. Remember, this was in 1970 money, multiply that by at least a factor of 8 to get todays monetary value. Even demo studios, with antiquated 8 track equipment were 20 an hour on up (that makes it $160 by todays money.) The cost of operation was high as well, the 2 inch tape used in 16 track recorders cost some $50 a roll, (not included in the price of the session.) Editing was a time consuming process, every edit point had to be laboriously found on the tape, razor cut, and the tape physically spiced together. Often hundreds of yards of acetate lay coiled in empty garbage cans waiting the razor. Not just the recording process was pricey. The cost of producing the vinyl record was astronomical. First, a master had to be made, with a special machine literally cutting grooves in a metal plate. Then molds had to be cast, (a mold was good for only a certain number of records, the longer the run , the more molds had to be made.) Finally the vinyl had to be pressed and the label printed. One a small run of a few hundred 45 rpm singles, just the record manufacturing cost alone ensured the impossibility of recouping expenses. Only in large runs and sales of many thousands did the vinyl record become profitable. The cost of recording and producing a small run of 45 rpm records to go on local jukeboxes and use as promotional tools was something many bands scrimped and saved for years, and the product would very likely be nowhere near airplay quality. A self produced album was a rarity, usually the result of a band either finding a wealthy 'backer,' or maybe a member working in a local studio for studio time in the off hours. A song writer either relied on simple guitar and vocal demos, or relied on demo studios to do quicky versions of his songs, often for a package price per song. Either way, the recording a band was not something done on a whim, or, on an empty wallet. So remember, the next time you drool over some esoteric retro tube 70's gismo, for the adjusted price of a few hours in the studio 'back in the day,' you now buy gear that will give you all the time in the world to create, hone your craft, and maybe still have enough left for that tube preamp.