Tubed In
by Craig Pearson
(from: The Windsor Star - Thursday, January 14, 1999)

Windsor collector takes old equipment and restores sound of music in fine fashion

Carl Kotevich is a modern old-time guy.

Sitting in the dining room/control room of his exquisitely kept old home, with the dark wood and wallpaper, Kotevich turns reel-to-reel tapes with his hands, listening for that distinct slow-speed groan that indicates the start of a song.

Then he hits Play, and a crisp, clean guitar fills the air with Delta blues as if being played only a few feet away.

You can somehow hear the room, the space, the resonance of an entire room. And you can't help but picture some well-worn nightclub, long after the patrons have wobbled out, and a blues band laying down rocking tracks in the warm wee hours. The sound recalls olden days, when amplifiers operated on vacuum tubes and musicians relied on their skills rather than their producer's.

Kotevich - who runs Cornerstone Music Services out of his east-end home - uses only older equipment, mostly Ampex, made between the '40s and '70s, all restored not just to sound good but to look good.

"There's no colouration of the sound with the old equipment," says Kotevich, who works as a technical services supervisor for Canada Post when not recording blues and other roots music. "You want it to be an exact replication of the sound. You dont want the amplifiers to put their own musical qualities into it."

In other words, recording sessions in the living room/tracking room of his house aren't for beginners. Play poorly and the recording reflects that. Play well and it reflects that, too.

Everything is recorded live off the floor. Virtually no tweaking comes in post-procuction. If the musicians make a mistake, they simply play it again.

"I stress keeping that signal path clean and short. That's how the musicians achieved that sound (of a bygone era)," Kotevich says. "They didn't have the luxury of working with 50 tracks. If you only had two tracks, you really had to get the most out of each one."

Kotevich has made an art out of placing microphones. And he has been working with

electronics for 25 years, focusing on vacuum tubes. Combine that with his love for playing blues guitar - specifically, beautifully kept National steel guitars - and recording seems a natural endeavour for Kotevich. He started recording with a home digital studio, which simply didn't offer the sound he wanted, the flavour of live music. It's a trend that has regained increasing popularity among certain professonals, such as Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal.

So Kotevich turned his love for old-style quality recording into a business, and has been running vacuum-tube recording in his house for five years.

He started with at 1953 Ampex three-track half-inch machine, covered in neglect and grime, that he bought from a private studio in Kitchener. Once he had restored that one to perfect working order, he just kept going, buying from the CBC or special flea markets or wherever such parts surfaced. Remember, one tube might run as high as $30.

Nevertheless, he now boasts perhaps three dozen intriguing machines from McIntosh amps to Shure Elvis-style microphones, and a basement full of such technical gear as oscillators and oscilloscopes and all manner of neatly stored and labelled bits and peices. In fact, much of his business now entails reapiring old equpment for others who don't know where to turn.

Of course, if he didnt have a surgeon's knack for technical rejuvenation, he couldn't work with old electronics.

"This equipment is definitely high-maintenance," Kotevich says. "Unless you have the time and patience to research it and develop the whole feel of how it's supposed to be restored, it's not worth having."

Kotevich does a lot of field recording these days - yes, with mobile Ampex gear - capturing the sounds of recording sessions in clubs, at music festivals, or even in barns if need be.

But nothing quite matches that whole atmosphere he seeks as does recording on the wood floors of his 1928 fieldstone home. Why, Kotevich often lights a fire to provide even more mood.

"The setting, the woodwork, the cove ceilings all help the creativity," says Kotevich, who charges by the project, not by the hour. "The whole room helps. It takes all the stress out of going into a studio and having that meter-running feel. It just feels nice."

Original article pictures and captions currently unavailable: [pic 2 - "A McIntosh power amplifier, circa 1961."]