SIXTIES

That first session, seemed to go very well, and indeed I was shocked when they asked me if I would be prepared to move to Detroit to help construct their new studio. My immediate response was ...you got to be kidding! It just seemed like it was a world away.

They gave me time to think it over however.

Three days later and it began to sound like a good idea. In fact a challenge. So I went across to Detroit and had a look at the premises.

JoAnne then told me about her contact in Cleveland and I went down to look over what was on offer.

Ken had a big garage where he stored all sorts of electrical equipment. We agreed a specification and he began to build what would be a state-of-the-art console. I travelled regularly to Cleveland to keep tabs on progress.

We also bought some spares, such as microphones, from Tom Shannon, who had moved from Buffalo to Windsor in late '64 to work at radio station CKLW.

It was fantastic, anything that I had disliked at other studios, was eliminated at Golden World."

Now that the equipment was on order, Bob could set about refurbishing the electrical store.

"The physical building work was probably done is less than six months.

There was already office space off to the left. All I had to do was take the centre part of the building and put up concrete blocks to provide more offices, a control room and a studio. Once the blocks reached a certain height I filled in the voids with sand for soundproofing purposes.

We also rewired the premises.

Once the console was ready, Ken brought it up from Cleveland and we set about installation using a uhaul truck.

I also built a mastering room. I had always mastered my own records in New York City and could cut the master lacquers. We bought a cutting lathe system from Gotham Audio and when it was time to install it, one of their staff, a guy called Steve (note : possibly Stephen F Timmer, the founder of Gotham?), was sent over as it had to be well balanced.

We cut our own masters thereafter and sent them to Columbia's pressing plant in Indianapolis.

They used to tell me that they were the cleanest, hottest masters they'd seen in a long time. I was very proud of that.

The painted Motown sign on the wall slowly disappears

As described earlier, the property purchase included a garage.

The garage adjoining 3246 West Davison. The Motown sign is still barely visible on the right of the image. NB the building was demolished in 2006.

Ed Wolfrum, one of Golden World's Engineers, describes it.

"The west side "garage" was a loading area for disc shipments. It entered into the west side of the building and there was a conveyer belt that loaded into the second storey where disks were stored. To the north, was a very small disk lathe room with a Neumann MONO Lathe with Auto Pitch Control, EQ and Levelling and a Studer B-67 with advance head.

Also in the garage area was a live echo chamber. It was cinder block construction with splayed, wet plaster walls. I helped Tom Nixon build that chamber when I first started working there.

Then sitting next to the chamber was an EMT plate and a Fairchild spring. When they were loading or unloading we could not use the chambers because of the acoustic coupling to the plate and the spring as well as the live room."

Note : Arthur Ashford of The Precisions recalls the staff using the Echo Chamber for Putting (golf) contests at lunch breaks.

Also, if you look at the main building, just beyond the garage entrance, the walls give the impression that the building has been extended.

Continued