RCA Studio B - Nashville
I will admit, this was a fantastic moment for me. To stand in the studio where many of both country and rock's earliest pioneers recorded was amazing. And, of course, Elvis recorded over 250 songs in this same room. The piano here is a 1942 Steinway. Much of the room is unchanged since they closed the room for recording sessions on August 17, 1977. There are still tape marks on the floor for amp and musician placement and mic positioning.
The walls in the corner are at the place where the vocalists would stand to record the main track. You can see the old Hammond B3 and the Leslie cabinet, as well.
One thing that was remarkable to me was how well "tuned" the room is. There was a fairly large tour group talking in the room, but the sound did not bounce or echo at all. The room doesn't have all the new foam partitions and wall coverings. It doesn't have the bass traps in the corners. It simply has a tile floor and the plain white acoustic tile that you might see in a department store or school of the same era. The walls are not flat, though, they have slight angles throughout the space. There are a few portable baffles in the corner that they used to isolate certain players, but overall the room is just well tuned with very simple methods.
There are few images of the control booth and equipment. I can't imagine how sophisticated it must have seemed back then. To think that many of these very well made recordings were done with tape, splicing and only four tracks is mind-boggling.
I regret that I didn't have a better camera to capture these images.
