Basilh...
Please don't hold me as for this being the exact truth !!
Yes, in the beginning, The stylis movement was in a vertical directional only. A very crude cartrige system was avalable at that time frame. This allowd only for a monoral sound only as there was only 1 axis of movement/change of the stylis.
I believe this is the way things were done in the beginning of stero recordings with the 45's and 33 RPM records.
1) The rythm(sp?) stuff, drums,bass,etc was always put on the left channel.
2) The guitar stuff, Lead,Steel, was always onn the right channel.
3) The lead singer, was always in the middle of the sound.
The reasoning behind this is:
In the early days, when one heard a song being sung/played, in a live situation, the band players were placed left and right according, with the singer in the middle. Therefore, record producers attempted to retain what the audience was hearing.
Next....
The physical make up of a stero phono cartrige, has 2 axis of movement. X & Y, approx 45 degree of each other, (This could really get long winded here but we will shorten it a bit) Therefore, the designers come up with a formular known as "L-R,R-L". When one canceled out the other, the results was the middle channel,where they placed the singer !!
The colour code you mentioned, is the results of the electronic industry,who had to have a define the "left" and "right", used a colour code for the wires from the stero cartrige to the amp. The 3rd/4th wire was generally black or white to indicate the ground or return line. This colour code allowed all repair shops to correctly assign the "left" and "right" sides of a audio system when replaceing a cartrige.
Now for a bit of trickery....
using a stero record, if one should remove the return wire/s from the cartrige, leaveing only the left and the right channel wires, this has a nice feature of basically removeing the middle channel from the sound, (remember L-R,R-L) therefore leaveing you with only the backup stuff. This was used by many of us in the early days to make practics tapes and such when we wanted to remove the singer/front man from the mix. ( this can still be used in todays stero recordings, eventho they are on CD's and such by a simply operation)
Boy, am I showing my age here or not????
Anyway, all this drival is the results of my early years as an electronics tech, durning the 60's and 70's. Too bad that many of our younger techs haven't had the oppertunity to play with the ventage stuff and learn how things really work. I talk with them every now and then,only to realize that they don't have a clue as to how the toys work. They are board changers only. Too bad the employers are more interested in makeing a profit by requireing todays techs to produce X number of units a day for money than allowing them to learn and understand the beast.
