EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

Office: 847-328-6703

Studio 3

The following is a visit with the genius of my mentor:

DAVE SARSER

David Sarser at Town Hall

and my first love...
Studio 3

Studio Three Console

A tour of The 9 x 3 CHANNEL PULTEC BLUE custom made console
of DAVE SARSER at STUDIO 3, NYC.

Dave Sarser, who played his violin, the "Zimbalist Stradivarius", for Arturo Tuscannini and his NBC Symphony Orchestra throughout the 1950's, is also an incredibly innovative audio engineer and electronics design pioneer. Around that time, there was a studio called Audio/Video on 57th Street and 5th Avenue in New York, owned and run by Dave Sarser's friends, Ollie Summerland and Gene Shank. They were the East Coast distributors of the Ampex Corporation, the major U.S. manufacturer of broadcast quality reel to reel tape transports and electronics. They also happened to be the designers of the internationally used Pultec Equalizer series, now a coveted "vintage" audio electronics treasure. Dave Sarser was, among many other things, the original east coast Ampex sales rep. He sold the first 3 track Ampex to RCA for Jascha Heifetz for his work at Republic Studios.

Sarser at Tape
Dave Sarser checking out one of the 3 Ampex 300 Consoles
he installed in the Toscanini Studio in the basement of Villa Pauline in Riverdale.
(Note the Brush headphones hanging next to the patch cords)

Dave Sarser's close relationship with Les Paul made him a great part of the legends of recording history. Les Paul, known in part for his involvement in the development of the solid body electric guitar, was an extraordinary guitarist and electronics gadget innovator. Les's home studio was in Teaneck, N J. Dave helped Les Paul with the design and acquisition of the first 8 track recording deck in history. It was an Ampex deck, custom made for Les, about ten years before anyone even thought of stereo, let alone multi-track recording. The collaboration of Les Paul and Dave Sarser, along with none other than singer/actor Bing Crosby, an early supporter and benefactor, led to many classic recordings of radio and television success for Les Paul and vocalist/guitarist wife and partner Iris Colleen Summers, better known as Mary Ford. Bing Crosby was also the owner of Crosby Television and a pioneer of video recording and television broadcasting.

Les Paul in the Studio
Les Paul at home in Teaneck NJ in '49.

Excerpt from a recent email from Dave Sarser:

"Jim,
Actually Les bought his 8 track Ampex 300 with SelSync from me. It was delivered to New Jersey from Ampex by Flying Tiger Air Lines and I was present when we unpacked it and found it was running at the wrong speed. We had to return it to the factory in California to be corrected.

- Dave"

Ampex 3 Track 3 Track Sreial Number

"The" 3 track 1/2" Ampex 300 deck sold to RCA by Dave Sarser. It recorded some of the most famous artists of all time, making some of the most historic recordings of all time. Elvis Presley, Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Sam Cooke, Perry Como, Van Cliburn, Arthur Rubinstein are but a few artist whose music passed through this machine. It was also the main record machine for the RCA Living Stereo Series, considered to be the apex of analog recording. What's even more remarkable is that this machine was still in service until the last days of its tenure at BMG Studios.
It was used as a playback device for some of the very same master tapes that were recorded on it years before.

Altec 342b Mixer Amplifier
Dave joined 3 of these Altec 342B mixer/amps to build the first A&R Studio
in the old Mogel film building on 48th St. in NYC.
Altec 342b Mixer Amplifier Rear View
(rear view...)

Emailed 4/18/03:

"Jim,
That was before Studio 3. The two principals were Jack Arnold and Phil Ramone and there was a third who was a harmonica player who broke off from them and started his own studio up on 58th street. Originally it was called JAC recording and when the HoneyDreamers bought them they changed the name to A&R. When the Honey Dreamers bought JAC and formed A&R, I was invited to join the company, but I had just made my deal with Skitch to build Studio 3 and the Corp was already formed and was about 6 months too late. I couldn't back out on Skitch.

- Dave"

On Sunday, October 9, 2005 at the AES Convention at the Javitz Center in Manhattan, I was invited by Dave Simons and Eliot Mazer as a panelist along with old engineering comrads Frank leico, Don Puluse, and Phil Ramone to offer our experiences as early participants in "The History of the Grand Recording Studio". In a pre meeeting with fellow engineers, I asked Phil Ramone if he remembered Dave Sarser. His memory kicked in. He was so moved with his appreciation of Dave, that most of his presention on the history of recording in Manhattan was dedicated to acknologing Dave Sarser's contribution to A&R Studio's beginnings. Phil also went on to mention his appreciation for Dave's influence on his musicianship. J.R. 4/116/06

A colleague of Dave's, Skitch Henderson was the well known orchestra leader of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He is still known today as the "New York Pops" Orchestra leader. Skitch's high profile gave him access to the jingle business and movie and television soundtrack scene, as well as to the top musicians in the country. Dave, Skitch and Skitch's wife, Ruth Henderson entered into a partnership in a recording studio and called it Studio3, simply named after the three partners.

The studio was constructed by Dave in the last remaining landmark carriage house of the Peter Stuyvesant estate. The four story structure stood on east 57th Street in Manhattan. The building had two sections joined front (facing north on 57th street) and rear. The front section originally served as the servant's quarters, and the rear housed the horses and carriages. When renovated, offices were constructed on the second floor in the front section with leaded windows in eaves facing north looking on to 57th street. On the third floor was an elegant, spacious living room, kitchen, library and bath and served as Skitch and Ruth's living quarters for a time. A broad winding staircase led to the fourth floor bedroom and bath which flaunted a balcony which overlooked the scenic park-like area at the rear of the building, covering a city block of other buildings yards. A glass enclosed hall looking on to a patio connected the rear section of the building and led to the control room on the second floor. The hall also housed an EMT plate reverb unit for the studio's use. At the front of the rear building, a room was constructed over the shaftway in what was formerly where the lift was, which was, during it's carriage house days, used to bring up the horse-drawn Stuyvesent carriages. Over the shaft way, a newly installed floor now filled the former elevator shaft and supported the high ceiling-ed control room.

At an auction at the famous NY Roxy Theater, Dave bought some electronic equipment and a basic metal panel cabinet which were part of the theaters original sound system. He laid out the design draft for a console in the style of a broadcast board on a napkin during a lunch. Using the panel purchased at the auction, he machined holes into it. He then sent the panel to his friends, Ollie and Gene, at Audio/Video Studios. They painted the panel in their renowned Pultec Blue enamel finish, so the console would match the Pultec gear Dave would install in the studio's equipment rack. A meticulous white formica desk was constructed by Dave's long time friend, chief carpenter from the NBC Broadcast Studios. It served as the pedestal for the Pultec Blue console trimmed with 2 inch black RCA industrial broadcast knobs, which formed the Control Room centerpiece.

The "base" of the console consisted of 20 19"rack mounted Altec all tube mic pre-amps that were part of the Roxy auction. Nine of the pre amps were used for microphone amplification. Three of the pre-amplifiers were used as summing amps for the mixer's three busses. Three of the pre-amplifiers were modified by Dave Sarser, by paralleling the output triodes and adding a feedback loop in the circuit to give them sufficient gain and power to output audio up to +24 decibels into 600 ohms to be used as the mixers final stage program buss amplifiers.

The pre-amps with 600 ohm input and output transformers were hard-wired to the double-ended balanced terminated patch bay jacks. The normalled patch bay contacts were wired to the 9 input jacks of the console which were wired to the nine mix faders.

The mix faders, (aka; volume controls, pots, potentiometers, attenuators), topped with the 2" RCA industrial knobs, were mounted in the sloped metal Pultec Blue panel.

Emailed 10/2/03:

"Jim,
I ran accros these sketches in the basement from one of the underwater files. After drying them out I copied them, put them together and scanned them. They are dated 1960 and were either the drawings I used or my thinkings in designing the Studio 3 console.

- Dave"

Studio Three Mixer 1 Studio Three Mixer 2
(click on pictures for enlarged view...)

Beneath the Pultec Blue panel were the following components:

RCA Knob Potentiometer Front and Back Twelve Ohmite/Allen Bradley 100k audio (logarithmic) taper rotary volume controls (faders) topped with RCA industrial type knobs.

Nine were for input mix faders and three for buss master output faders.

Buss Selector Switch

Eight AT&T telephone type, 3 position toggle switches to select which of the three busses the first 8 of the 9 mix faders could be selected to, so that any mic could be routed to any of the three tape tracks.

One 100k linear dual pot replaces the 3 way toggle selector of input channel 9 and enables stereo panning between the Channel 1 (left) and Channel 3 (right) busses.

Thirteen 100k linear center-tapped pots. Nine were used for echo sends from their respective input faders. Dave's clever usage of a single space saving control that was center-tapped to allow a triple function. In the dead center position it would be off (no effect). Rotating this pot to the left increased that channel's volume to echo chamber #1. Rotating right increased the echo volume to chamber #2. Unusual but effective!

The remaining three pots were positioned above the three buss master faders and were used as echo "returns". The challenge here was, how now do you get the echoed signal to mix (return) with it's unaffected "dry" signal on whatever of the three channels it might be routed to? To get the reverb chamber's 1 and 2 to mix back with the buss master faders 1, 2 and 3, I.E., allow the echo to be mixed back with the original (dry) source signal, rotating any of these three center tapped "return" pots to the left would return chamber #1 to buss masters 1, and/or 2 and/or 3. Or rotate right to return chamber #2 to buss masters 1, and/or 2 and/or 3. Typically, not all signals would have an effect added to it. When recording a 3 track session, a signal on track 2 could have it's source's echo effect returned to it by turning it's master's echo return to the left. When stereo sessions developed, chamber #1 would be returned to channel one and chamber #2 would return to channel three. And then channel one would be routed to the left tape track and channel three would be routed to the right track.

Six rows of AT&T/Graybar 5 selector position telephone pushbutton switches.

Since many functions of editing sessions were redundant setups, the mixers' first three inputs had source selector's mounted above their respective faders . This made routing routinely used audio sources more convenient. For example, a sound effect tape or background music could be brought up at the touch of a button. AT&T/Graybar 5 selector telephone pushbutton switches were used to select a "source" to a fader. The first console fader's input source could be easily selected. From top to bottom; button #1 selected the mic pre-amplifier. #2 came from the two track tape machine's left output. #3 was the second deck's 2 track left output. # 4 was the Phono left output. #5 was from the patch bay so anything miscellaneous source could be plugged in.

The remaining three AT&T 5 position selectors were used to direct the three output busses to the various recording decks, and also selected the center buss VU meter to the mono mix buss allowing one Volume Indicator meter to have dual function.

The selectors also routed the center / #2 program buss of the console to be routed back to busses #1 and 3 to provide a "Phantom Center" feed for Stereo recording. Stereo was still in its' infancy. Perceiving a center image from 2 speakers without a third center speaker actually being in the center was pretty phenomenal at the time. It was and still is an acoustical illusion. Since recordings were all done in mono, consumers still had mono systems worldwide. The "Phantom Center" was really a novelty and an "ahead of its time" concept, as was the "Phantom Center" pan pot on the Dave's mixer's channel 9 input. When stereo mixing was desired, typically the band's elements would be selected to the left on channel/buss #1 or right on channel/buss #3 for and the vocal would be routed to channel/buss #2 and that entire channel/buss would be routed or split if you will to channels #1 and #3 via the AT&T output switches.

Three Aux mixers. An addition to the console at its rear was a vertical panel which housed three auxilliary 4 channel mixers for larger sessions. Again the aux mixers were simply 100k pots mixed into a Peerless mic transformer which went to the patch bay and simply patched into the spare Altec mic pre-amps, which then would be patched into a main mix faders as "sub" groups.

A Mono Mix Buss Master was derived from the three buss masters as well as the VU meters were located in this section of the console.

VU Meters

VU Meters Attenuator

Three API VU Meters monitored the program outputs. Above each meter was a Daven attenuator. Since the console had so much headroom available, you might want to drive the inputs hard so as to drive the outputs to the "max" for a better signal to noise ratio. This would cause the VU meter's needle to "pin" over the edge of the scale making level of volume assessments impossible. The Daven pots provided calibrated attenuation to the meters in 1 decibel steps to allow adjustments to an average program level to be set to "0"dbVU and a reference for calibration to the recording deck was thereby achieved. It allowed you to get closer to absolute "0" level of the console's buss which is common in today's digital "Brick Wall" threshold. At this point the volume control of the tape deck would be re adjusted to match the recalibrated meters.

Dave Sarser at his Studio3 custom board.

The outboard processors consisted of a Pultec EQP-1, a Pultec EQP-1A, a Pultec MEQ-5 and a Pultec filter equalizer in the vertical rack to the immediate left of the console. (see the photo), just above the four Altec 436 compressor's remote meters and attack/release controls panel and the 1567A Altec outboard tube mixer and Urie metronome. There was also a Thorens TD124 professional phono turntable.

An EMT plate reverb and two modified Fisher K-10 Space-X-Pander spring reverbs provided echo (two feedback knobs in panel above Pultec filter). In those days, reverb was referred to as the "echo" chamber.

A McIntosh Amplifier and Altec Musicians Amp (Dave's own design-at top of rack) drove the three Altec 601B coaxial monitor speakers in Altec utility cabinets (shown beyond the rack and above the console). Transistor amps debuted not long after these photos were taken.

At the rear of the room were two Ampex 300 duplicator tape decks with Ampex 300 tube electronics. One deck was a monaural full track 1/4" deck. The other was a 2 track (half track) 1/4" version. To the left of the patch bay rack was a third Ampex deck . A model 350 which was a full track recorder with 2 track play back heads. The the three decks accommodated a two track to two track and full track to full track dubbing facility. They accommodated 14" reels. Either a 1/2 inch or 1/4 inch "3 track" head assembly, when needed, would replace the 2 track or mono head assemblies. (Interesting note: Dave's dubbing technique was to play the tape backwards so that the faster transient attacks of the audio information, since being reversed, would "ramp" up slowly to it's beginning thereby making it easier for the tape to record it hotter with less distortion. This technique would later be used by major mastering houses to cut "louder" records.)

I met Dave Sarser in 1961, my last year of high school. I was on my way to Pratt Institute of Technology when I realized there were no courses in recording technology or audio engineering. I was at a loss. I had all the audio questions in the world, and Dave had more than all the answers. He taught me that the secret to creating audio circuitry is in the experimentation. Trying various components to see what best improved the circuit and tailor it to your application. There was no real map to most of it in the end. I was reluctant to accept that at first. But over the years I found that the answers were in the in the trial and error. Even when someone gave me the answers, it stil worked better if I modified it.

Aside from his musical prowess as an accomplished violinist with Arturo Tuscannini and his NBC Symphony Orchestra, Dave had extensive knowledge of electronic circuitry, as he designed the Altec Voice of The Stars tube power amplifier. It was nicknamed the Musician's Amplifier. His audio installation at the World's Fair Vatican Pavilion was highly acclaimed.

Since Dave was an Altec distributor as well, Altec mics including the three 21c Lipstick condenser mics (below), and Schoeps, Sennheisser 421, were among some of the Studio 3 mic collection.

In STUDIO 3 during '60's STEINWAY PIANO campaign recording session.
Dave Sarser, shown here manning his console
(rear top center beneath the Ampex 300 tape deck).
Fritz Steinway

Fritz Steinway, John Steinway, Sr. (seated) discuss the script as NW AYER representative looks on (top left next to Dave). The voice-over talent reads the Steinway scripts at the Altec 21C "lipstick" condenser tube microphone with omni capsule to his right.

Mastering in the Studio 3 control room:
the Steinway Guys

John Steinway (right), leans on the Sarser custom console. Dave Sarser with the right stuff, "tweaking" the Pultec EQ, Fritz Steinway (seated left) and the NW AYER advertising reps looking on.

About tape editing: Imagine... no more razor blades, perfectly matching tape cuts every time.
Studio Splicer 2

Studio Splicer 4

Picture this... A chrome plated piece of brass stock, hollowed out, milled and drilled with holes and a stainless steel, spring loaded cutter inlaid at 135 angle, attached to a vacuum cleaner via neoprene tube. I dubbed it THE SARSER SPEED SPLICER.

What are friends for?...

Here is a custom preamp made by Dave's friends at Pultec. The left and right speaker pads were added later.

Dave Sarser's Pultec

How's this for a plug-in? Gee! 80 watts of mono power.
Dave Sarser's Compressor

Dave Sarser's Custom Lipstick Microphone
DAVE'S custom made lipstick mic.

"Sister Susie slipped in the snow. I shall insist upon silence at this inquest"
In the development stage of these mics with Altec engineer John Hilliard, John's ultimate mic test was to record this dialog without anomalies.

I just thought it might be nice to point out that my favorite voice-over talent who has the best storytelling voice quality that a child ever heard on any children's rocord was none other than

Gloria Sarser, AKA Miss Gloria of Romper Room and still wife of Dave Sarser.