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Is there anything special that needs to be done mixing hard-panned low end instruments intended for vinyl release? (well, besides phase checking, obvious on many levels..) It seems to be a big no-no amongst cutting engineers, but i'm sure it's been done before and it'd really help a mix i'm working on..

Or is it generally a bad idea that will compromise the overall outcome too much?

you may run into problems with mistracking. even if the lathe will cut widely panned deep bass, the resulting groove may be unplayable on some ttables. and you certainly will get a lower overall level than if you had centered the low shit.

old-skool vinyl dudes routinely bring bass freqs to the middle, most anything below 400Hz or so. partly they do this to avoid mistracking, and partly they do this b/c it 'kicks ass.'

you might try summing the very low end on your tracks to center and panning the rest of the frequency content on those tracks. it may create the effect you want.

tmidgett wrote:old-skool vinyl dudes routinely bring bass freqs to the middle, most anything below 400Hz or so. partly they do this to avoid mistracking, and partly they do this b/c it 'kicks ass.'

yikes! that high? i was considering hi-passing the bass at around 100-150hz or so as a compromise. fuck. i need something to balance out the right side..

how does a band like dianogah or whoever get away with stereo-panned basses? ..or the first ramones record for that matter?

i dont tend to sum the bass into the centre if i can avoid it. if the stereo effect is outragous then i may sum it slightly. my verticle amplitude limiter control had 6 settings. on lacquer i would cut it very deep and with the lateral deepening it shouldn't be a problem. if you cut dmm however that can be a problem as your trying to cut as shallow as possible to reduce surface noise (lacquer is the opposite) so a very stereo signal will make the stylus leave the copper and the groove will look like a sewing machine's been on it. also the swarf can snap and you'll have a ball up situation which sucks as you have to start again.
some engineers will sum it to the centre to make life easy. i reckon its the challenge which makes it fun

so the more i look into this it seems like:

-as long as you don't go for 'loud' levels
-squeeze as much onto one side as possible and
-don't have any out of phase stereo bass

this should be entirely possible, right? third, you said something about cutting deep for lacquer, does this mean you'd have to cut at 33rpm? or does the speed of the record have no correlation to the depth of the groove?

sorry for the delay in replying....me my mum died so lifes been shit.

i'd say dont be too outragious with your bass stereo. make the sides as even as you can. remember level dictates how much space you have .long sides mean lower levels. speed has no bearing on depth.

The mono mixes below 150-200 Hz were started because of the large size of the LF portion in the grooves. One sided heavy bass regularly causes dime-store-plastic-tonearm "record players" to jump right out of the groove and mistrack (and usually skate to the label since it was already out of the groove).

Today, most of the people still using 'tables are using decent models with proper setup and decent cartidges. This fact, plus the handful of people operating the handful of cutting lathes still in use are better at it than when the decent tech were diluted (and deluded?) among the idiots that worked for the labels.

Try to keep it somewhat low in level, or plan to even it out, or plan a "remaster" on CD only.