TODD - Todd Cochran on VTL - Perfect, New, Still Sealed

VTL, or Vacuum Tube Logic, was the name chosen by David Manley to for his high end audio company which came upon the U.S. scene in the mid-80’s. The VTL record label was started to show the quality of recording possible using the Manley products for recording and the VTL products for monitoring playback.

From Teresa Goodwin, Positive Feedback Nov/Dec 2011:
Recorded in Manley's ViTaL studio in Chino, California, a space designed specifically for "purist recording techniques only." The room is 40 feet by 30 feet with a cathedral peak 16 feet high. The entire acoustic treatment is finished in Oregon Oak and Douglas Fir timbers with continuous Helmholtz tuned resonance absorbing slots. The floor is rubber over high-density particle board over concrete with a resultant reverberation time of approximately 1½ seconds, providing a totally neutral and resonance-free acoustic.

Every piece of equipment in the recording chain is entirely tube, entirely analog, including the microphones. The Manley Gold Reference Stereo Condenser mic is the centerpiece of the recordings, no other additional microphones are used. It is of the so-called large capsule variety, having a diameter of 1¼ inches with 3-micron gold-deposition mylar diaphragms. The stereo version has one fixed capsule and one rotatable capsule with the pick-up pattern being continuously variable. His most often-used choice was figure of 8 in the classic Blumlein coincident crossed-pair mode. 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.

All the music was played "live" and captured straight onto 2 stereo tracks using no equalization of any kind.

This particular VTL recording is simply titled TODD and it features Todd Cochran (also known as Bayete and Umbra Zindiko). For a fascinating description of Cochran’s remarkable artistic career, you might be interested in reading more at:

http://neverenoughrhodes.blogspot.com/2008/08/lives-of-todd-cochran.html

The record is perfect as it has never been opened making this a rare opportunity. It is Vital-001.