Josh Sklair - JOSH *SEALED* NEW by VTL, All Tube Audiophile Recording, 2 LP Set

Up for sale is a wonderful sounding Audiophile Jazz Recording by David Manley of VTL.

JOSH
Josh Sklair

VTL 013
NEW and FACTORY SEALED.
Audiophile 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl.
2 LPs (4 Sides).

Released in early 90's and long out of print
Very special All Tube Audiophile Recording:

ViTaL Music / A Division of Vacuum Tube Logic of America Inc.
Produced and engineered by David Manley of VTL (Vacuum Tube Logic of America Inc.).

Every single piece of equipment in the recording chain
was entirely tube and entirely analog.
No equalization of any kind was employed.

I will combine shipping.

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ABOUT THIS RECORDING

The heart and soul of any recorded sound must surely be the acoustical properties
of the room or hall itself, and the microphones being used within that acoustic. I
designed the acoustics of the VTL studio in Chino, California, for 'purist' recording-
techniques only, with all the music played 'live' and captured straight onto 2 stereo
tracks.

Measuring 40 ft x 30 ft with a cathedral-peak ceiling height of 16 ft, the entire
acoustic treatment is finished in Oregon Oak and Douglas Fir timbers with continu-
ous Helmholtz tuned resonance absorbing slots. The floor is rubber over
high-density particle board over concrete with a resultant reverberation time of
approximately 1 1/2 seconds, providing a totally neutral and resonance-free acoustic.

Every single piece of equipment in the (entirely tube, entirely analogue) recording
chain is of my design and is built in our factory in Chino. Somewhat unusually, this
includes the microphones themselves. The MANLEY 'GOLD REFERENCE' STEREO
CONDENSER microphones is the centre-piece and the only microphone used for this
recording. No other additional microphones were used at all. The Manley micro-
phone is of the so-called 'large capsule' variety, and has a diameter of 1 1/4 inches
with 3-micron gold-deposition Mylar diaphragms. The stereo version has one fixed
capsule and one rotatable capsule, which offers a continuously variable 'pick-up
pattern'. I most often choose the 'figure of 8' in the classic Blumlein coincident
crossed-pair mode. For our own recordings, we use custom version of the
"REFERENCE GOLD' microphone. The entire vacuum tube amplification is built
into the microphone body (8 triodes in the stereo microphone!), and no transformer
coupling or external amplification is used at all.

The microphone is connected via VTL 'Quad' double-screened cable right into a
unity-gain mixer for level-setting and metering. The mixer is base around the MANLEY
REFERENCE preamplifier and can mix up to 10 microphones into 2 busses. Mixing
of microphones is achieved by each input having its own dedicated grid, and not by
the usual 'opt and buildout resistor' method as found in everyy console in use in the
recording industry.

No equalization of any kind is employed (although we do have MANLEY PULTECS
and SHELF-PARAMETRIC EQUALIZERS on hand to patch in if needed, say, with
electronic based instruments that might be played on a rock or pop session). The
patch-bay itself is comprised of audiophile-quality 4mm silver plated banana-plugs,
all fixed wiring in the patch-bay and control room is VTL 'White wire' - 3 x pure copper
and 2 x silver cores in Teflon.

We fully updated the mechanics in the 1/2 inch 2-track Studer C37 analogue tape
deck, which contains only our Manley pure tube circuitry. At 15 ips this machine is
flat from 20 HZ to 20KHZ +/-.2 dB. Hours and hours and hours of listening con-
vinced us to make the CD releases from the analogue master tapes (transferred
through our MANLEY 20-bit ANALOGUE to DIGITAL CONVERTER) in prefer-
ence to using simultaneously-recorded digital masters we'd made at the sessions
(also directly recorded to both DASH and DAT storage media through our con-
verter). These recording sound pretty darn good, but without the naturally rich and
faithfully sonorous accuracy of analogue recording at its best.

AGFA type 468 tape was used at 200 nano-Webers, but run somewhat on the 'hot'
side (+5dB) without any kind of noise reduction. Again, we chose to accept a small
amount of tape hiss, in preference to the sterility and inherent phase-shift distortion
produced by (sodid-state) noise reduction

ABOUT THE MASTERING

The master lacquers for these albums were cut in our own mastering room - a
room that took nine months to build and install.

Our totally unique lathes are a matched pair of purpose-built SCULLY-
NEUMANNS - certainly the only two in the world . We built these “hybrids” to
combine the very best features of both designs. The unbeatable Scully chassis,
lead-screw and head-carriage and sleds now sport the nearly 80 lb Neumann
turntables. These tables are driven by JVC-Technics motors, offering wow and
flutter figures of .0045% - some 10 times better than the finest tape machines!
The other major Neumann part is their superb head suspension-dropper box,
which contains the cleverest automatic variable depth device ever designed.

The lead-screw drive and computer interface is a highly upgraded unit from the
Capps Company, designed for use on longer classical sides.

The cutting head is another story of recent innovation and upgrade. It started
off as the last Westrex model built, called the 3DIIAH (A for aluminum coils
and H for Helium cooled). The key to this wonderful cutter head’s unique
superiority (over the European so-called “miniature” heads and regular Westrex
stereo models ) lies in an innovated torque-tube design developed by Otto Hepp
and Len Horowitz. 84 years young and still going strong, Otto Hepp is the man
who built all Westrex heads in the last 40+ years.

Otto Hepp innovative torque-tube design makes it far smaller and lighter than
the original Westrex and Haeco models. This enables us to use a very short-
shank Neumann cutting stylus, instead of the nearly 3/8 inch long Westrex cutting
stylus.

The difference is startling : all the rich, opulent bass and mid-range sounds of the
huge (magnetically and physically) Westrex head are retained , plus the silky-
smooth highs found previously only in the Neumann and Ortofon miniature heads.
Gone are the 8K and 12K resonance’s that previously detracted from the
greatness of the Westrex Stereo cutter head.

Only five of these heads exist in the world . We have the latest two, which were
crafted especially for us by the master –Otto Hepp.

The Westrex head is driven by a pair of stock MANLEY 350 watt monoblocks,
with the addition of a special RIAA preamp that we designed and custom-built
(and which also provides feedback for the head).

Elsewhere in t he chain are MANLEY PULTECS and MANLEY LIMITERS, MANLEY
PEAK PROGRAMME METERS and another pair of MANLEY 350 WATT
MONOBLOCKS driving the Tannoy 15 inch DMT monitors.

The tape machine is a Studer A80 (Preview), modified to ½ inch gauge with our
own design of replay heads and mANLEY TAPE REPLAY PREAMPLIFIERS.

All cutting is done flat, as is our master recording. The limiters and EQ are
available for use if necessary when tapes made by others are mastered in the
room.

We hope you enjoy our labors and endeavors to uphold and upgrade the
wondrous art of analogue recording and disk cutting.