Will Fly wrote:

Just playing NAT at the moment - considering the circumstances in which it was recorded by Bill, with the equipment and in the environment available to him, it's wonderful. "Annachie Gordon, in style and tone, reminds me of recordings of Bert Jansch.

For reference:

Noah's Ark Trap was recorded in Bill's studio in the basement of his house in Greetland, West Yorkshire. I attended some of the sessions because my wife (Chris Coe) was one of the session musicians. I spent a lot of time in that studio along with my good friend the late John Gill who was a well respected recording engineer and Bill's sidekick for several years.

The album was recorded via a Raindirk desk on to a medium quality multi-track recorder (ie. not as good as an Ampex or a Scully but fine for the job - I can't recall the make at the moment) using Dolby A noise reduction.

The walls were undressed stone giving good dispersion and there was a medium amount of sound treatment. It wasn't a high end studio such as Livingstone or Strawberry but it did the job.

As I remember, the vocal mic was a brilliant old valve driven AKG C12 and the instruments were miked on AKG C414s but memory might not serve accurately.

I'm not sure what Bonzo3Legs is listening to or on but my copy seems to have adequate top end frequencies and the balance seems fine. I don't think the LP is loud compared with others because Bill didn't favour lots of compression which is what you need to get a loud vinyl cut. I would think that many discs of the time were the same - a wide dynamic range combined with a quieter cut.

It was fine middle range technology for its time and Bill's ability to use it is beyond question - he was a master recordist in his time. Describing him as an 'idiot' is just plain offensive. Others have said why in earlier posts.