Miles Davis Live at the Plugged Nickel

[Rooster_Ties]

48 minutes ago, JSngry said:

1976. Think about that.

Those might be THE most whack examples of cover art in the entire ‘legit’ Miles catalog.

[mjzee]

Currently available for pre-order through Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Plugged-Nickel-Live-1965/dp/B0FT7CWYF7/

[JSngry]

53 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Those might be THE most whack examples of cover art in the entire ‘legit’ Miles catalog.

1976 and American Columbia wasn't interested for a while. There was no Second Great Quintet yet.

[Rooster_Ties]

5 minutes ago, JSngry said:

1976 and American Columbia wasn't interested for a while. There was no Second Great Quintet yet.

Oh, right — those were Japanese only too.

[Holy Ghost]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but the 70+ mins single cd Columbia sampler they released of the Plugged Nickel, did it for me.

[Guy Berger]

Imho the 1965 Plugged Nickel recordings, while wonderful, are inferior in musical quality to the 1967 live recordings from Newport and Europe.

My guess is their reputation is largely based on the fact that for a long time they (and Miles in Berlin) were the only widely circulating live recordings of this quintet.

[jazzbo]

I have the repress of the Japanese set on gold disc. IMO it sounds better than the US cd set, and the Tower Records SACD set sounds a bit better than the Japanese. The edits really don't bother me.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

According to Sony's marketing blurb, "This new 10LP edition mirrors the original sequence, cut from the high-res Mosaic masters". Mosaic was AAA by this time, so this doesn't make sense.

I asked Scott Wenzel (via Facebook) if maybe the analog master tape they gave them to use for their LP set was digitally mastered and he said, "I'm not sure exactly how it was transferred and restored, only that, yes, we used analog masters".

So if Sony gave them an analog master tape created from a digital mix, they weren't above board with Mosaic. Considering Sony did the same thing to Mobile Fidelity albeit at a much larger scale, I wouldn't be surprised.

FWIW, he also implied that Mosaic would have liked to have been involved with this repress of their 10 LP set but that Sony isn't allowing them to license anything at this time.

[medjuck]

15 hours ago, JSngry said:

1976. Think about that.

What is that?  The Japanese release?  I don't recall ever seeing it. 

[jazzbo]

21 minutes ago, medjuck said:

What is that?  The Japanese release?  I don't recall ever seeing it. 

Yes, one of the original LP releases' cover.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

6 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

According to Sony's marketing blurb, "This new 10LP edition mirrors the original sequence, cut from the high-res Mosaic masters". Mosaic was AAA by this time, so this doesn't make sense.

I asked Scott Wenzel (via Facebook) if maybe the analog master tape they gave them to use for their LP set was digitally mastered and he said, "I'm not sure exactly how it was transferred and restored, only that, yes, we used analog masters".

So if Sony gave them an analog master tape created from a digital mix, they weren't above board with Mosaic. Considering Sony did the same thing to Mobile Fidelity albeit at a much larger scale, I wouldn't be surprised.

FWIW, he also implied that Mosaic would have liked to have been involved with this repress of their 10 LP set but that Sony isn't allowing them to license anything at this time.

Whoa, this is starting to sound like a real mastering mess!  They are going to have to clarify the sources they are using before I would consider a new "remaster".

[Daniel A]

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

What is that?  The Japanese release?  I don't recall ever seeing it. 

And what is it? An IC board?

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

What is that?  The Japanese release?  I don't recall ever seeing it. 

Those two records are the beginning of the concept of The Second Great Quintet as a thing. Nobody was thinking about that group as a live band, not yet. It was those two records that got the ball rolling. In 1976, after Miles was retired and after how many evolutions, and who was thinking about a 10 year old club date shaking up the world?

But the they were.

You could get them if you had a contact for Japanese records. I got mine in 1981 (after after hearing them fou a few years)  at Jazz Record Mart, but I had to order a week in advance, such was the ongoing demand. 

5 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

And what is it? An IC board?

That's been the consensus as I have heard it.

[jazzbo]

I first got my hands on this music in 1982: this 2 LP US set: https://www.discogs.com/master/62386-Miles-Davis-Live-At-The-Plugged-Nickel

I still have my copy and it still sounds great.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

4 hours ago, Daniel A said:

And what is it? An IC board?

That is a de-capped or de-lidded IC part, in 1977 likely an SOIC package. No idea what part or what functions it does, but it looks fairly basic. I worked with die like these in plastic packages like this for over 40 years so I've looked at pictures like these for a long time.

If you Goggle de-capped IC, you can see a bunch of interesting packages after the plastic is removed. Here is an article on the process: Delid and Decap

FWIW, this is what it probably look like before it was de-lidded:

The Goggle image search for "decapped IC" gets some interesting ones. I think the two chip package looks interesting. We produced quite a few of the dual-die packaged parts. They were sometimes difficult to manufacture.

This photo below shows a closer shot of the bond wires connecting the die to the leads of the package. These are called "reverse ball bonds" because they start on the die with a smushed ball and end on the package lead. In the old days, the bond started on the package lead and end on the die. It's funny because today, almost all bonding is done using "reverse" ball bonds. Today, a bond starting on the lead is really the reverse process.

The stuff that goes into this manufacturing process is the work of textbook after textbook. Everything from the "glue" holding the die down to the material it's glued down onto comes into play with functionality & reliability. The wires themselves are usually gold but they'll also use aluminum & copper (usually coated with Palladium) depending on the function of the part.

 

[JSngry]

17 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

That is a de-capped or de-lidded IC part, in 1977 likely an SOIC package. No idea what part or what functions it does, but it looks fairly basic. I worked with die like these in plastic packages like this for over 40 years so I've looked at pictures like these for a long time.

If you Goggle de-capped IC, you can see a bunch of interesting packages after the plastic is removed. Here is an article on the process: Delid and Decap

FWIW, this is what it probably look like before it was de-lidded:

The Goggle image search for "decapped IC" gets some interesting ones. I think the two chip package looks interesting. We produced quite a few of the dual-die packaged parts. They were sometimes difficult to manufacture.

This photo below shows a closer shot of the bond wires connecting the die to the leads of the package. These are called "reverse ball bonds" because they start on the die with a smushed ball and end on the package lead. In the old days, the bond started on the package lead and end on the die. It's funny because today, almost all bonding is done using "reverse" ball bonds. Today, a bond starting on the lead is really the reverse process.

The stuff that goes into this manufacturing process is the work of textbook after textbook. Everything from the "glue" holding the die down to the material it's glued down onto comes into play with functionality & reliability. The wires themselves are usually gold but they'll also use aluminum & copper (usually coated with Palladium) depending on the function of the part.

 

Yeah!

That's what I would have liked to have seen used as a basis for the new covers!

[Eric]

4 hours ago, jazzbo said:

I first got my hands on this music in 1982: this 2 LP US set: https://www.discogs.com/master/62386-Miles-Davis-Live-At-The-Plugged-Nickel

I still have my copy and it still sounds great.

Is that the same material as the two Japanese lps?  Thanks!

[JSngry]

It is.

[bertrand]

20 hours ago, jazzbo said:

I have the repress of the Japanese set on gold disc. IMO it sounds better than the US cd set, and the Tower Records SACD set sounds a bit better than the Japanese. The edits really don't bother me.

What edits are you referring to?

[RiRiIII]

32 minutes ago, bertrand said:

What edits are you referring to?

https://www.plosin.com/milesahead/PluggedNickel.aspx

"At first the producers of the domestic project -- executive producer Michael Cuscuna, Bob Belden, and Steve Berkowitz and Kevin Gore from Columbia -- worked with masters provided by Sony Japan. The project was suspended, however, when archivists in Columbia's Manhattan storage facility came upon a cache of twenty-five 1/2" three-track "B reels," recorded on a second deck as backups for those times when the reels on the master deck were being changed. These new reels included more than twenty minutes of music that was missing from the supposedly complete Japanese set! All the tunes that were issued in edited form on the Sony Japan set could be restored to their full length. (For details on the restored passages, what was restored and where, see the notes to the December 22 and December 23 sessions elsewhere on this site.)"

[bertrand]

I remember that now.

I never got the US box set because, IIRC, one of the CDs was defective on all copies and rather than repress it, Sony just sent people CDrs which I thought was pathetic.

I assume this will be a new pressing, but will wait a bit to see for sure. I have the highlights, and an earlier single CD called Cookin' at the Plugged Nickel. I also downloaded the entire set for free from my Public Library, a service called Freegal. I believe it is technically legal, it is a subscription system they pay into. The labels are OK with it, especially Sony, although I doubt the Artists would be if they knew. I got a lot of out of print recordings this way, and also bought quite a few after as physical CDs because I liked them so much.

 

[jazzbo]

I never heard of nor experienced a bad disc in the set.

[RiRiIII]

This morning before going to work, I played the last SACD from the recent japanese set. I loved it in terms of performance ans sound quality.

Hopefully I will compare soon with the 1995 US set and then let you know of any material differences.

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by RiRiIII

[bertrand]

2 hours ago, jazzbo said:

I never heard of nor experienced a bad disc in the set.

It was definitely discussed at the time, possibly here. I did not make it up, especially the part about the CDr replacement.

[Daniel A]

16 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

That is a de-capped or de-lidded IC part, in 1977 likely an SOIC package. No idea what part or what functions it does, but it looks fairly basic. I worked with die like these in plastic packages like this for over 40 years so I've looked at pictures like these for a long time.

If you Goggle de-capped IC, you can see a bunch of interesting packages after the plastic is removed. Here is an article on the process: Delid and Decap

FWIW, this is what it probably look like before it was de-lidded:

The Goggle image search for "decapped IC" gets some interesting ones. I think the two chip package looks interesting. We produced quite a few of the dual-die packaged parts. They were sometimes difficult to manufacture.

This photo below shows a closer shot of the bond wires connecting the die to the leads of the package. These are called "reverse ball bonds" because they start on the die with a smushed ball and end on the package lead. In the old days, the bond started on the package lead and end on the die. It's funny because today, almost all bonding is done using "reverse" ball bonds. Today, a bond starting on the lead is really the reverse process.

The stuff that goes into this manufacturing process is the work of textbook after textbook. Everything from the "glue" holding the die down to the material it's glued down onto comes into play with functionality & reliability. The wires themselves are usually gold but they'll also use aluminum & copper (usually coated with Palladium) depending on the function of the part.

 

Thanks Kevin, that was more than I expected to learn, and all of it very interesting!