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Any carts today?

Also note: our use of carts is strictly for mono, so technical issues and quality are far less problematic than trying to use 25-year old tape equipment for stereo programming.

John - I just passed 43 years in the radio business in April. When I started on my 17th birthday in April 1967, it was during The Morning Of Cart Equipment with most smaller stations having had carts only a couple of years or so at that point. There were also quite a few which didn't have carts yet at all. In '67 small-market stations were using the tube-type Spotmaster 400s or Tapecasters. Suffice it to say the warning stamped on most commercial ET labels PLEASE DO NOT DUB TO TAPE CARTRIDGE was justified. Agencies which spent thousands producing nice spots for their clients didn't want them airing with no lows, flutter, wow or off-speed.

Which brings me to the large-format longer carts. In my 43 years, I've used the big carts maybe two or three times at most. Generally these would drag unless they were played in the better machines, like the ATC Criterions. The belt-drive Telex-transport machines usually couldn't pull them at the correct speed.
 
A couple of FM stations back home in south-central VA used carts before I left in 2006:

WTTX Appomattox was a religious station owned by a pretty...umm...extreme Baptist church about 20 miles away. They bought the 3kW mono FM station in 1980 when carts, mono FM, and signing off at night were fairly normal.

Fast forward 25 years: Besides a new tower to replace the old rickity one lost in a storm, the 100% live and local station had no automation at all, signed off from 12m-6a, used the orignial 3kW mono transmitter (which buzzed to an almost unbearable level), and the original cart machines from the 70's to rip commercials onto (this was a "commercial" station). They reused carts too much making the sound very muddy...almost like AM on FM! (Since sold to a religious satcaster...upgraded to a new tx with stereo in '07 I think)

A little further south across the border in Roxboro, NC, WKRX is another old class A FM that signs off at night. They had a stereo transmitter and the music sounded OK, but the commercials were on carts and sounded pretty awful. Last time I checked they still signed off 1a-5a.

I think on FM if you're still using carts chances are you are probably signing off at night. It's just funny because the $600 laptop I'm using to type this could EASILY suffice for automation if you get a guy with a pocket protector to look at it ;D And give it a year and the few commercials you get overnight would pay for this drastic expense...

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see a well-maintained old school FM out there using carts or some antiquated 1970's automation machine. But it seems like the owners of FM stations with carts are more about being spend-thrifts than nostalgia buffs.

Radio-X
 
You could take some AM and turn it into a museum with jocks playing carts behind a glass, and an old Shaeffer automation system playing "Hit Parade" tapes
 
Savage said:
Didn't Fidelipac or somebody try the floppy-disc cart idea about 20 years ago? I can't recall which manufacturer did, but every report I recall was to the effect that the results were disastrous.If I'm remembering - admittedly a stretch these days - you couldn't get enough audio on the individual floppies to be worthwhile. There was no mp3 compression back then.
Click to expand...
The ASC and Sonifex ones used APT-X - I believe Sonifex brought theirs out around '91/92. The ASC machines offered a "minute mode" where they sample at about 24KHz and you'd get just over 60s of stereo recording time on a standard 3.5" HD floppy. Later on, the ASCs offered a larger capactiy 230MB MO drive.

Oh, and I fired-up the BE triple-stack earlier - the motor is about as loud as my vacuum cleaner!
 
Long cart experiences: one station where we put long newscasts on big carts (we had a blind news director who would have had issues reading braille copy live..he did however operate the station. We had to do braille cart labels). Other was very long carts for makeshift automation..commercials inserted from the AM board.
 
I have a couple hundred random carts and 3-4 operating cart machines, available for pickup on the West Coast. You haul. No charge if you promise to not bring them back.
 
The first cart deck I used had a lever on it that you had to pull down to bring the wheel up to lock the cart in place and have it ready for use.
I find it interesting how manufacturers work to make their products better. I remember the first CD machines for radio use had these little holders that you had to put the CD into first, before inserting it into the machine. We fortunately bought a lot of them as they got broke pretty easily. The middle black thing in the center often fell out when manhandled as can happen in radio.
 
johnbasalla said:
The first cart deck I used had a lever on it that you had to pull down to bring the wheel up to lock the cart in place and have it ready for use.
I find it interesting how manufacturers work to make their products better. I remember the first CD machines for radio use had these little holders that you had to put the CD into first, before inserting it into the machine. We fortunately bought a lot of them as they got broke pretty easily. The middle black thing in the center often fell out when manhandled as can happen in radio.
Click to expand...

Ah, the ubiquitous Denon CD carriers and their spring loaded doors.
 
I am in the process of re-building a couple of old Spotmaster Bathtub machines. One record deck the other playback. Anyone out there old enough to remember the Gates "Spot Tape" machines?
 
a/k/a the "Spot Tape 101." With the window-shade-wide magnetic tape that had 101 audio tracks, all 90 seconds max. You used an indexing lever to select the track, which, to put it charitably, was not a very positive system. Lots of times you'd get more than one track at once.

The wow, flutter and studio mechanical noise were horrible, even by 1960 standards. The Spot-Tape made a racket in the studio when it rewound to the beginning of the magnetic player-piano roll. And of course, you couldn't segue from one track to another since the machine had to rewind before playing each item. To segue, you'd need TWO Spot Tapes and shuttle between them. I heard that a few stations did this, but never actually saw it in practice.

Actually, IIRC, the shop manual for the SpotTape advised against using it to reproduce music.

The Spot Tape was exemplary of an era of awful studio equipment, unfortunately some of which was from Gates, who otherwise was a pretty good manufacturer. During the same period Gates developed their own cart machine line, the infamous CartriTape and CartriTape II (the latter with its ersatz ATC Criterion-esque styling, but the same crappy transport.)
 
WBBF in Rochester bought every weird/offbeat/ultimately-failed audio storage device ever made - or so it seemed. They had a SpotTape 101. They had Ampex Cue-Mats. Metro-Tech logger. Ampro cart machines, although they also had some mainstream ones - Collins and ATC Criterions in earlier iterations.
 
I've got a ton of carts that i'm looking to unload, along with some cart machines; mostly RCA RT7B's, RCA RT 27's, RCA RT 37's, ITC SP models, both stereo and monaural units. Also have spare boards for RCA's and ITC's; 2 carousel 500 capacity spinning cart racks, New carts (audiopak A-4's) still in wrappers, spare parts galore. Plus I have manuals as well. Approximately 1400 audio carts of various formats; mostly A-2's, A-3's & A-4's.

If you are interested contact me; not looking to make a killing but would like a fair price.
 
What happens when you try to use New-old Stock 8-tracks (bulk erased, of course) in a cart machine?
Can you just add foil tape for machines which used that for cueing?
I'm not likely to ever go to carts, :D, but physically they're the same format in every way except length, right?

I miss hearing the "click" over an on air mike, where the muting is not woking right
 
Tom Wells said:
What happens when you try to use New-old Stock 8-tracks (bulk erased, of course) in a cart machine?
Can you just add foil tape for machines which used that for cueing?
I'm not likely to ever go to carts, :D, but physically they're the same format in every way except length, right?

I miss hearing the "click" over an on air mike, where the muting is not woking right
Click to expand...

8 Track carts had the pinch roller built in, while carts have a hole for the player to solenoid engage its own pinch roller against the capstan. An 8 track will not play in a broadcast cart machine.... they are mechanically different systems, the cart is a slightly different size and the speeds and track usage differs.

Of course, 8 tracks did not have cue tones... primary, secondary, etc.

I believe the speed was different, also, and of course a broadcast cart machine had either two tracks or three... one for cue information and the other one or two for mono or stereo audio. Broadcast carts were 7.5 ips except for the TomCat machines that ran at 15.
 
8tracks ran @ 3 3/4ips, half the standard speed of a broadcast cart. If we insert an 8track cart on a broadcast cart machine it won't run because the shell, as said b4, it's slightly different, the pinch roller won't touch the capstan.
 
I have an old ITC mono unit sitting in my garage. I know I should throw it out but I keep looking at that machined deck plate (that made it weigh a ton) and can't bring myself to just "pitch it."
 
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