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ANTIQUE "CARTRIDGE" MACHINE

N

nightfly61

Guest
The brand name is ATC-Automatic Tape Control. The unit is called the "Sound Salesman". Mine I found while cleaning out the attic of my station. It's opening where you put the tape is about the size of a vcr player door, maybe a little longer. It can play a regular cart but has no cue head. It runs on tubes & I had to grind off rivets to get it open to get to the innards. The 2 belts that drive it are snapped. It looks to have been a portable and it has mic & headphone input jacks & a play/record switch but no record head. Any idea what they may have used this for? Before the belt broke I could stick a regular cart in & it worked, just didn't re-cue. I've looked all over for "big old carts the size of vcr tapes" but no luck. Anyone familiar with this old girl or where I could find replacement belts without having to use plain old rubberbands?
A friend said maybe old car dealers used them to run music & ads the station made as background music? ???
 
The people at WJBC formed a company that became ATC Automatic Tape Control, These first machines were modular using tube electronics on plug-in cans. Collins had a marketing agreement to market them under the Collins name exclusively for two or three years. Jack Jenkins and Ted Bailey quickly refined the first models and came out with the PB-150 and the PB-190 series using new electronics and moving to the larger hystersis synchronous motors with a three belt drive and heavy flywheel and a direct pull solenoid. They also added the cue tones of roughly 1 kHz and 150 Hz on the control track. Collins sold a bunch of these units. Later on Collins and ATC both sold the same deck with different names on the front panel.

Link:
http://sujan.hallikainen.org/BroadcastHistory/index.php/Tape Cartridge History
 
As I recall, those machines were used to play spots for clients.
It could also be used to record sound bites from the client location.
Are you sure the tape head doesn't have a cue track at the bottom?
Some of these old machines used a "stereo" head. The Program track was on the top and the Cue track was on the bottom.
If the unit records, it probably uses the Playback head for Recording.
 
frankberry said:
As I recall, those machines were used to play spots for clients.
It could also be used to record sound bites from the client location.
Are you sure the tape head doesn't have a cue track at the bottom?
Some of these old machines used a "stereo" head. The Program track was on the top and the Cue track was on the bottom.
If the unit records, it probably uses the Playback head for Recording.
Click to expand...

That's right, the cue head was the same head as played back audio. In a mono deck the cue track was the lower one on a two-track head, and on stereo decks it was the lowest of three tracks. There were originally three sizes of carts, and early units almost always were set up to play all three sizes, hence the super-wide 'mouth.'

I have seen similar units to what you describe (solid-state, however) built into a suitcase, for use, as Frankberry said, to play spots for clients at their location. When cassettes became common several years later, demo playback tape decks such as these became relics. It was much easier to just give the client a copy for them to keep, which they could play on their own machine at their leisure.

Good luck finding belts. :-[ Using rubber bands may not be so far-fetched! :D

Kind Regards,
David
 
As I said it has no recording head and the regular carts I put in just keep on playing, so if the playback head has a built in cue head it doesn't work. It's definately not stereo, it has 1 old Jensen speaker in it. Sounds odd that they would cut a spot onto regular cart & waste the time to dub it onto something like this. Why not just invent a portable regular cart machine(this one's just as heavy), or better yet, have the client come TO the station? I even looked on EBay just to see what the old tapes looked like & found none. Must be pretty rare. As big as the deck is i thought maybe they used it to play like a 2 hour continuous spool of background music with an occasional ad or station image line popping in, like for places who didn't want a regular remote but did want station "presence".Thanx for the info!
 
Lane_Lindstrom said:
Any chance you can post a photo of the deck?

Thanks
Lane
Click to expand...
Here it is almost done-I've gotta find some trim decals to dress up around the edges of the lettering I painted & take some more Brasso to the chrome.
http://s163.photobucket.com/albums/t308/aceyacem/?action=view&current=cart2.jpg

http://s163.photobucket.com/albums/t308/aceyacem/?action=view&current=cart1.jpg

if those don't work...
http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t308/aceyacem/cart2.jpg

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t308/aceyacem/cart1.jpg

I just fired it up last night, put a cart in 7 blew the speaker so I've gotta go dig one up. :mad:
 
The name "Sound Salesman" has you all thinking this is for use by
radio salespeople. Nah. The original intent of that machine was to
"sell" products with an endless message ... you'd record a message
on an endless loop cart, start it up in this simple mechanical
machine, with no cue, or solenoid, just pull the lever to engage it.

The tape would run until you turned it off.

Not intended for radio use, although ATC was one of the pioneers
in broadcast cart machines way back when.

... tom
 
The tape transport looks like a Viking design, not something that would come out of the ATC Croxton Avenue plant in Bloomington. My guess is that the ATC badge was added, I will ask some freinds who worked there to see if it was something they made.

Lane
 
I figured the station recorded long segments of music (instrumental) & added clients schpeel overtop every so often...like I said earlier...may have been something they did for clients at their stores if they didn't want a full blown remote ???
 
Kinda looks like a Viking to me. If that's it, I still have all the parts I got when I bought out Tapecaster some years ago following their bankruptcy. Haven't sold any in years and don't care to, but I still have a few belts. Tapecaster was still using the Viking design until they brought out their new model which resulted in their downfall.

If you want me to send a few belts, email me... no charge. [email protected]
 
Hi Bill -

I didn't realize Tapecaster went bankrupt, I figured they just faded away when
cart machines went the way of the dinosaur. Paul Shore was a nice guy, answered
the phone on the first ring, was helpful with advice and quick to ship parts
back in the day. Their new design didn't have much torque and sounded pretty
bad on longer carts. Every company had their good and bad machines.
Cart machines definitely needed maintenance on a regular basis to stay
working ... it was always something ! Belts, solenoid adjustment, head cleaning
and replacement, relays, transistors, capacitors, head alignment ... etc.

... tom
 
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