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| Betty Cantor-Jackson and Unterfunken with the DSP BettyBoard Reel |
So, back to so-called sanity, Artifact #3 is a 10.5" reel of Ampex 456 tape that was signed by Betty Cantor-Jackson, with "Betty Boards" thrown on by Betty for good measure. A nice Steal Your Face is on there as well. Ampex 456 is considered by many an audio freak to be the best sounding tape formula of all time. It was Betty's favorite. It was the Dead's favorite. Listen to 5/8/77 and Lesh's bass....hear how it has this amazing creamy low-end analog smear that just sounds like a juicy plum? That's 456. The tape formula came out in the '70's and was the defacto studio standard for years. The Dead used it up through the '80 Warfield run at least. Running it at 15ips (inches per second) and it's the bomb. Run it at 30ips and it's a little smoother and more hi-fi, but not as juicy. Dark Star Palace got rid of our Studer A810 some years back, but we now have an Anamod ATS-1 with a 456 tape card on it (with an Ampex ATR102 deck card) that just sounds amazing. If you have the cash and don't like to be a tape machine mechanic, this is a sick way to listen back to all your dead CDs.
I was lucky enough to meet Betty through a mutual dead freak / friend: Dark Star Dan. DSD is well known in the bay area as he ran the Grateful Dead night in the Haight for years doing some serious Dead DJ'ing. Dan is a fellow audio engineer and currently works with Betty doing sound work at Glide in SF and other venues. DSD invited my wife, son and I down to Glide one Sunday and we got to spend some time with Betty after the gig. What a hoot! Betty is still the hottie and still has a biting wit that will take off your toes and tongue. Don't mess with this chick!! Betty and I had discussed doing an interview for Dark Star Palace, but she went shy when I had mentioned I had thought of doing a remastering series through the Dead's old gear of some classic tapes and would she like to help do the Mastering? That was the wrong line, as Betty really feels that folks have taken advantage of her over the years and she hates..more than anything...people fucking with her tapes. Upppps!!! Anyway, she was sweet about it and we emailed a few times on some other things, but I never pushed it or brought it up again. I ran into Betty and her son a year or so after at AES in SF (the Audio Engineering Society) and we had a good laugh on it. Betty was checking out the BAE (Brent Averill Enterprises) new 1073 modules that had just come out...a near-exact replica of the Neve 1073's that were in Garica and the Dead's Neve 80-series console that was at Front Street that Betty worked on over the years. Seemed very full circle.
So there you have it... a BettyBoard reel, a recent photo of hottie Betty, and there is much more to come in the next few post to help celebrate this 35th anniversary of 5/8/77.
Tape of the Week? Duh! Get your BettyBoard tape of 5/8/77 out and crank it up!!! You can check out several versions that are streamin' over at the Archive HERE. Dancin', dancin', dancin' in the street...........
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