I have a modern day Home Theater system that plays surround sound but I wanted to experience 1970’s era Quad. The least expensive way to do that for me was to purchase a vintage Dynaco Quadapter which I have done.
I was hoping to hear some Beach Boys music which I thought was recorded in Dynaquad as listed on the sleeve notes. See second picture below. However I remembered that in 2016 Beach Boys engineer Stephen Desper said that the Beach Boys releases supposedly recorded in Dynaquad were in fact only recorded in order to be decoded via a virtual two channel Quad via a gizmo like his “Spatializer.” Desper did work with Frank Zappa on albums that were recorded for 4 channel Quad.
I have some other music that was recorded on Dynaquad and so all was not lost. The best results that I have has with the Quadapter is on two releases that were recorded on the Columbia SQ Quad system. Poco’s Crazy Eyes and the Kooper, Stills and Bloomfield Super Sessions LP. I have the stereo versions of these recordings but they sound excellent via the Quadapter.
I also listened to the tapes with the original recordings on the two clips above. The first clip has a Quad broadcast from San Francisco station Stereo 103 and the second features a Quad show on Berkeley’s KPAT FM. On both broadcasts, the DJ’s say that you can tape the show in stereo and later play it in Quad once you have a decoder. I did that albeit more than 50 years after they made the suggestion.
Unfortunately whoever made the recordings did not record some of the more interesting tracks that were played but you will get the gist of what the broadcasts were about.
Both clips also feature a wildly eclectic San Francisco station called K101. A place where you could hear a Yes album track along with the Osmonds. The content from K101 on the first clip is mostly music but there’s some DJ and ad content on the second clip. I have uploaded another K101 air check in the past. Quite an interesting station.
Eclectic is the key word for the tape as the Quad broadcasts include everyone from Walter Carlos to Perry Como to Janis Joplin to Ray Stevens to Percy Faith. and more.
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