Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A Word From David B. Treadway

"It's rather intense to hear my station coming in, unaltered, across forty freaking years of time/space!

One thing that seriously delights me is the SOUND of the station, especially the bass. It is exactly the way I remember it from the first moment I sat down at the controls! I think Felix had an absolute razor-sharp cutoff in the audio at 70 cycles (Dave Montgomery called it a choke), his theory being that everything under that was just hum. This really gave the low end some definition and clarity; anything below 70 cycles would have simply been muddiness.

Couple this with the tube audio out of the Collins board in the studio, the 15 khz equalized phone line to the transmitter and the tubes in the transmitter itself, and the result was that big, warm, punchy sound that became legendary and elusive when solid-state took over. Yeah, it was that simple."

It's great for those of you, dear visitor, who share your recordings with us...I also dearly love and enjoy listening to them so many years later...the atmospheric fade and rise, the thunderstorm static, the mix of another station trying to fade into the 1090 frequency, the pop of the needle on an LP (you DO remember LPs, don't you?)...so realistic, just like it was yesterday, all combine to give wonderful memories of KAAY's heyday.  It personally gives me warm memories of, as a kid, laying in bed and listening to that old green Zenith, its tubes glowing in the dark room....

Great memories...we love to bring them to YOU, dear visitor!  If you have airchecks or other KAAY-related audio to share, or memorabilia of the station, please contact me at my e-mail address below, we'll definitely share it here...and thank you, David B. for what you did!  Rock on!

Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)

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