AAA 100% Analogue This LP was Remastered using Pure Analogue Components Only from the Master Tapes through to the Cutting Head

Speakers Corner / RCA KE 30973 - 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl  

Limited Edition - Pressed  at Pallas Germany

 Mastered by Rainer Maillard at Emil Berliner Studios in Berlin

Jeff Beck is truly a worldwide gift to rock music and guitar enthusiasts everywhere. There will never be another Jeff Beck, a guitar genius who has enthralled generations of aspiring musicians and music lovers with the many fine recordings he has made for the past five decades.

 

Celebrating five decades in the music business, this English native initially captivated millions of kids in the 60’s with his first recordings with The Yardbirds. He drove the rockers mad with his famous guitar licks and dynamic presence on the stage.

 

The 1971 smash LP kicks things off with the hard rocker Got the Feeling. This radio and fan favorite graced the air- waves on the ever growing FM radio format and helped bolster even further the rest of the Rough And Ready album with follow up hits like the soulful tour de force of Situation featuring a great vocal from future Humble Pie crooner Bob Tench and a stellar keyboard workout from Max Middleton.

 

More solid numbers from the band include the great medley of New Ways/Train Train, the power ballad rocker Jody, plus the prog-rock champion Max’s Tune. All in all, making Beck’s third solo effort one of his most revered in his long lasting and huge catalog of classic recordings.

 

Noted for his stellar guitar work, pretty much introducing new ways of using technique, distortion and effects to a whole new generation of guitar players, Jeff Beck’s Rough And Ready is truly a primer for a ton of rock and blues artists.

 

Great talent and low morals well describes the groupie-loving and colleague-killing Jeff Beck - and no fear of denial! But this fast-paced life demanded its toll, which came in the form of a life-threatening car accident. The ace on the guitar was forced to retire for two years but returned to the scene full of vigour and with new musicians to launch the second Jeff Beck Group.

"Rough And Ready" doesn't offer what might be expected from Brit Rock as far as a heavy sound or the boss's egomaniacal leaps on the guitar strings are concerned. Bob Tench opens the album with a surprisingly soulful sound and soaring falsetto in "Get The Feeling". But then in the next number, "Situation", we have crackling fire from the lead guitar and inventive solos - all easy-going and down-to-earth. Beck wouldn't tolerate routine rock: this is obvious from "Max's Tune", in which developing melodies are hacked to pieces by the clash of cymbals. To round off the album, the band sings about "Jody" with constantly varying rhythms and fascinating harmonic twists, which genially and firmly find their way along the narrow path between sentiment and testosterone. So much roughness is a must!

Recording: April-July 1971 at Island Studios, London, by Jack Ashkinazy
Production: Jeff Beck

Musicians:
Jeff Beck, lead guitar
Cozy Powell, drums
Bob Tench, vocals
Max Middleton, piano
Clive Chaman, bass

 

Are your records completely analogue?

Yes! This we guarantee!

As a matter of principle, only analogue masters are used, and the necessary cutting delay is also analogue. All our cutting engineers use only Neumann cutting consoles, and these too are analogue. The only exception is where a recording has been made – either partly or entirely – using digital technology, but we do not have such items in our catalogue at the present time

 

Are your records cut from the original masters?

In our re-releases it is our aim to faithfully reproduce the original intentions of the musicians and recording engineers which, however, could not be realised at the time due to technical limitations. Faithfulness to the original is our top priority, not the interpretation of the original: there is no such thing as a “Speakers Corner Sound”. Naturally, the best results are obtained when the original master is used. Therefore we always try to locate these and use them for cutting. Should this not be possible, – because the original tape is defective or has disappeared, for example – we do accept a first-generation copy. But this remains an absolute exception for us.

 

Who cuts the records?

In order to obtain the most faithful reproduction of the original, we have the lacquers cut on the spot, by engineers who, on the whole, have been dealing with such tapes for many years. Some are even cut by the very same engineer who cut the original lacquers of the first release. Over the years the following engineers have been and still are working for us: Tony Hawkins, Willem Makkee, Kevin Gray, Maarten de Boer, Scott Hull, and Ray Staff, to name but a few.

At the beginning of the ‘90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the reissue policy was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC Compact Classics, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and others, including of course Speakers Corner, all maintained a mutual, unwritten code of ethics: we would manufacture records sourced only from analogue tapes. 

 

Vinyl’s newfound popularity has led many other companies to jump on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source from which to master: CDs, LPs, digital files and even MP3s. 

 

Even some who do use an analogue tape source employ a digital delay line, a misguided ’80s and ‘90s digital technology that replaces the analogue preview head originally used to “tell” the cutter head in advance what was about to happen musically, so it could adjust the groove “pitch” (the distance between the grooves) to make room for wide dynamic swings and large low frequency excursions. Over time analogue preview heads became more rare and thus expensive. 

 

So while the low bit rate (less resolution than a 16 bit CD) digital delay line is less expensive and easier to use than an analogue “preview head”, its use, ironically, results in lacquers cut from the low bit rate digital signal instead of from the analogue source! 

 

Speakers Corner wishes to make clear that it produces lacquers using only original master tapes and an entirely analogue cutting system. New metal stampers used to press records are produced from that lacquer. The only exceptions are when existing metal parts are superior to new ones that might be cut, which includes our release of “Elvis is Back”, which was cut by Stan Ricker or several titles from our Philips Classics series, where were cut in the 1990s using original master tapes by Willem Makkee at the Emil Berliner Studios. In those cases we used only the original “mother” to produce new stampers. 

 

In addition, we admit to having one digital recording in our catalogue: Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky”, which was recorded digitally but mixed to analogue tape that we used to cut lacquers. 

 

In closing, we want to insure our loyal customers that, with but a few exceptions as noted, our releases are “AAA”— analogue tape, an all analogue cutting system, and newly cut lacquers.