Pink Floyd - Aachen, 2nd gen (Marbal-Neonknight) (24-96)
 
Album info
 
Recording Date  : 12-07-1970
     
Length  : 81:54
Format  : FLAC
Track List
 
01 Astronomy Domine 06:10
02 Green Is The Colour 03:46
03 Careful With That Axe, Eugene 09:50
04 Atom Heart Mother 19:09
05 Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 13:15
06 A Saucerful Of Secrets 17:31
07 Interstellar Overdrive 12:13

Notes
From the info file:

Pink Floyd 1970-07-12 Aachen, Marbal 2nd gen (24bit/96kHz)

Pink Floyd
1st Open Air Pop Festival, Reiterstadion Soers, Aachen, Germany
12 July 1970

Lineage: Maxell Epitaxial XLII90 (1980) 2nd gen cassette > *Technics RS-B965-M > Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 > Reaper v4.61 and iZotope RX4 > FLAC (24bit/96kHz)

xACT used to create FFP
*The Technics RS-B965-M is a modified deck - for details see the Tapeheads.net forum

01 Astronomy Domine
02 Green Is The Colour
03 Careful With That Axe, Eugene
04 Atom Heart Mother
05 Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
06 A Saucerful Of Secrets
07 Interstellar Overdrive

Total running time 1 hour 21 mins 54 secs

I spoke to Ulrich A who made the original recording and he was very helpful.

The provenance of the copy I am sharing is Ulrich > Rolf Ossenberg (probably a yellow Agfa FeCr) > Marbal. Marbal received his tape from Rolf in 1980. It's likely that most copies doing the rounds are from a second analogue transfer to a Maxell UDXL II given to Rolf as a present in 1987. Ulrich didn't make any copies of the reel for himself and recalls subsequently giving the original master tape to Rolf.

Ulrich explained to me that he recorded the complete PF performance on a Telefunken M 300 reel-to-reel tape recorder, using a 13cm (5 inch) reel to reel tape. The recorder belonged to a close friend of Ulrich's with whom he attended the three day Aachen festival. He believes that they used the automatic recording level adjustment of the recorder. In Ulrich's view the recording 'basically was not too good due to our old equipment.' He has never heard of another recording of the concert.

During the PF performance Ulrich and his friend sat approximately 10 meters away on the left side in front of the stage. At the beginning of the concert you can hear Uli hysterically saying 'schalt das Tonband an hier, schalt das Tonband an' and his friend responded with 'läuft doch schon die ganze Zeit'.

Ulrich recalls that prior to the performance Nick Mason took a lot of pictures of the audience with a huge camera from the stage.

During the concert, Ulrich thinks it was Careful, Roger's bass string broke. He repaired it very quickly and tuned it with David.

Waters said later in the show to Gilmour 'come on the guitar' after the first keyboards and bass duet in AHM, where Gilmour would normally come in. This can be heard on the tape and it sounds like they were having a technical problem. After this you can hear one of them saying something, and Gilmour's clearly not playing what he normally would there.

Ulrich did not record any other Pink Floyd shows.

Marbal's tape runs very slow but gradually speeds up. My thanks to goldenband for his customary speed correction advice.

AD: +10.25%
GITC/CWTAE: +9.05%
AHM: +9.18%
STC: +8.36%
ASOS: +8.36%
IO: +7.49%

AD, GITC/CWTAE and IO all slide around a bit, especially the first two, so the values are workable averages. AHM, STC, and ASOS are pretty stable by comparison.

This 2nd gen was recorded with Dolby B on and I left it off for my transfer. I copied both sides of the cassette at the same level. Side B starts with STC and is generally quieter than A. I tried exporting to mono but doing so increased the hiss and didn't improve the sound stage. iZotope was used to fix the azimuth which was subtly out. There was a slight repeat at the beginning of side B when the tape was flipped and I have left this intact.

You'll find a picture of a Telefunken M 300 that Ulrich sent to me to show me what it looked like in the folder. I have also included a photograph of the poster for the festival from my collection.

Marbal cassette / Neonknight tape transfer, June 2016