Carts as a piece of history

[jh]

I wonder if the industry ever tried to ramp up a consumer cart?

Joe

8-track and 4-track tapes back in the 60s and 70s were essentially carts.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

That was funny since he couldn't play it anyway.
Keeping some old gear around can have its rewards well into the future.

I wonder if the industry ever tried to ramp up a consumer cart?

I don't know what specialized use early carts may have been used for, but the public did indeed run into carts as automobile based 4-track and 8-track players. Then they made some "decks" you could use at home. Plug them into your hi-fi. (Stereo was BRAND NEW. The in-car playback of carts may have been the FIRST stereo that many households owned.

I think it was 1958 when our station owner, a gadget-freak engineer at heart, brought a manual cartridge player into the station and put it on the desk beside the console. No push-buttons. Had a little lever on the right side that you manually pulled back to snap the roller in place and start the player. (Took some skill and practice to keep it from making mechanical noise when your mic was open.)

The the rumor circulated in the industry: When you record a commercial on one of those endless loops, WHISTLE, pause for a fraction of a second, and then start your recording. When a commercial ends, reach over and push the lever to stop the cart. When you get the next record going, or the network news, throw the CART TAPE into the audition buss, run the cart til you hear the whistle. Stop the cart and put it away. It's ready to play... right on cue.

And up in Bloomington IL somone had the bright idea: We can use a BEEP instead of a whistle, put it on the other track so it isn't heard on the air (much... tee hee) and let the machine stop itself by sensing the beep.

This was a case where the public was buying music on carts, and the industry figured out a way to use the same hardware.

(Wasn't LEAR... as in Bill Lear... as in Lear-jet the promoter of one of the consumer cart formats?)

 

[joeybabe25]

I came to the realization awhile back that few students or pros getting into the industry have even touched a cart....much like kids and the dial telephone.

Or dial a radio. Even though millions still do, we think of it as "turn the knob to station X, not dial up so and so.

Joe

 

[joeybabe25]

Top 40 wouldn't have sounded as hot as it did without carts.
What an amazing innovation carts were.

I loved carts too. But there was something about cueing up a record or "slip-cueing" that made you really feel a part of the whole production. Certainly more than todays digitized stations where the jock basically can just sit there for a shift and not do much more that switch on a mike.

Better, I know. And I prefer it. But getting a record out of its slip cover with just seconds to go before you need it, cueing it up, and blam you're off, that's the radio of my youth.

Gee.

Joe

 

[joeybabe25]

Lots of people had a love/hate relationship with cart machines, that might explain it. He could have also been told to destroy them.

Records skip...carts machines jam. And boy, the worst thing was to have the tape come loose on a cart. Not being technical, that's when it went in the trash.

Joe

 

[joeybabe25]

8-track and 4-track tapes back in the 60s and 70s were essentially carts.

Could you play those in radio cart decks?

Joe

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I loved carts too. But there was something about cueing up a record or "slip-cueing" that made you really feel a part of the whole production. Certainly more than todays digitized stations where the jock basically can just sit there for a shift and not do much more that switch on a mike.

Better, I know. And I prefer it. But getting a record out of its slip cover with just seconds to go before you need it, cueing it up, and blam you're off, that's the radio of my youth.

Walking into the typical control room of the 1950s-1960s was an emotional event. We didn't realize it at the time. But looking back now at pictures of the era, closing my eyes and rethinking the process, or walking into a station that still has a "museum piece" studio... is like when you read in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures about the priests who went into "The Holy of Holies". It was a special place that captured your mind and took it some special place and turned on the juices that made you say things in disc-jockey language.

I get that same "thrill" when I go to a tractor show and you see the farm tractors of the 1930s and 1940s. A lot of CAST IRON parts. Hell-built-for-stout. The old 16 inch turntables with a hand-full of handle to switch from 45 to 78 RPM had that same feeling of heavy-duty-iron.

I'm not knocking today's studios. They tend to be more comfortable, a lot more function at your fingertips. But they are more like walking into a California tea-room and boutique. I assume if I worked in one for awhile it might capture my mind and take it to some special place.... a place where I don't know the language.

 

[Mike_Rafone]

At WGAU in 1967 we had a 55 minute cart loaded with anArthur Godfrey show to be used in case the network line went down or for some other reason The Old Red Head and his show wasn't available at 10:07 AM M-F.

Got curious one Saturday night and ran it on a spare player throughth e cue channel. It was sustained and sounded formatted intentionally as a "rescue-cast." Then had to get back to work, and had to let the thing cycle through to its cueposition, then very carefully put it back in the storage rack.

 

[joeybabe25]

At WGAU in 1967 we had a 55 minute cart loaded with anArthur Godfrey show to be used in case the network line went down or for some other reason The Old Red Head and his show wasn't available at 10:07 AM M-F.

Got curious one Saturday night and ran it on a spare player throughth e cue channel. It was sustained and sounded formatted intentionally as a "rescue-cast." Then had to get back to work, and had to let the thing cycle through to its cueposition, then very carefully put it back in the storage rack.

WOW! The longest cart I ever saw was 15 minutes, I think. It boggles me to think of stuffing that much tape into a cart!

Joe

 

[OldNumber7]

8-track and 4-track tapes back in the 60s and 70s were essentially carts.

Could you play those in radio cart decks?

Joe

No. Though commercial 8 tracks and carts were similar in size and general appearance, they are a mechanically a bit different. The consumer products had the pinch-roller built in to the cartridge, unlike industry carts.

 

[Mike_Rafone]

pinch-roller built in to the cartridge, unlike industry carts.

in which the roller slammed in through a hole in the bottom of the cart when you inserted it into the machine. The little hole tingy was an easy way to carry them on your thumb.

 

[Savage]

Actually the automobile cartridges were in two different formats depending on whether they were 4-track or 8-track. The 8-tracks had the pinch roller built into the cart. 4-tracks were mechanically identical to broadcast carts. Dual-system car tape players had a deployable pinch roller - when playing 8-tracks the little roller was blocked from engagement by the physically different cart body.

One difference: the car players ran at 3.75 ips while broadcast carts ran at 7.5 ips.

I had a dual-system player in my 1970 Maverick (!) I could record home-brew carts at the radio station by dubbing them at double speed; that way they'd play correctly in the car. Of course then were in mono and were essentially "ONE-tracks" but....very inexpensive way to get car music....

Actually we do still have cart machines in service at the station. They're used for specific programming and as another poster noted here, they are perfect for live sports broadcasts, of which we do a ton (over a hundred college hoops games this season alone.) The carts are way more flexible than digital spot stacks and much faster for the operators to change breaks, etc. We also use carts in live talk shows. But the regular broadcast day is programmed using digital automation like in most stations.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Actually the automobile cartridges were in two different formats depending on whether they were 4-track or 8-track. The 8-tracks had the pinch roller built into the cart. 4-tracks were mechanically identical to broadcast carts. Dual-system car tape players had a deployable pinch roller - when playing 8-tracks the little roller was blocked from engagement by the physically different cart body.

Thank you! It was rattling around in my head that there were the two types of (primarily) automobile based cart formats. And also rattling around was the concept that one of them was mechanically compatible with the broadcast carts. (the carts were interchangeable, but the track configuration and the speed were NOT compatible.)

RELATED MEMORY: In that era there was another piece of available hardware that some broadcasters experimented with. Remember the Seeburg 100 45 rpm record playing mechanisms? Same concept as the big gaudy Seeburg jukeboxes of the era, but the player mechanism was place in a gray box about the size of two microwaves side by side. Gates packed one up with a tape deck and called it the Nightwatch system. About as primitive as an automation machine could be. One audio track from the tape deck, one record. One audio track from the tape deck, one record. The tape had to play in a linear configuration. No hunt-and-seek. The records had to be loaded into the Seeburg in order. Then for 4 or 5 hours: One tape cut, one record. One tape cut, one record.

I don't know if this was unique to KXJK in Forrest City, AR or whether other stations did this also: They bought a Seeburg unit, PLUS the remote control pod like restaurants used to put at tables so patrons could drop coins in and select their favorite record without getting up and walking to the juke box. KXJK put the gray box either just behind the announcer or maybe in the next room. Put the little remote selector pod at the announcer's desk position. Just as some of us using the "manual version" of the cart and whistling just before the start of the audio content so the cart could be manually cued-up, the folks at KXJK put a burst of tone on the tape ahead of the original commercial or station promo, then put a measured amount of silence (maybe one second?) and then the audio content began. Dub the tape onto a blank 45 using the left-over transcription lathe. Put a relay driven by a tone sensor in the Seeburg box. Now you get the picture. Announcer looks and the log. Coming up a commercial for the Pontiac dealer. Punches the number into the jukebox remote control box. The Seeburg walks its way down the record collection, grabs the appropriate 45 and throws it on the turntable, and begins playing. When it senses the tone, power to the motor that spins the record is cut. When the announcer pushes the start button at his desk, the Seeburg springs back to like the the commercial plays.

That was being used circa 1959. I don't know how long they had been using it when I saw it.

 

[OldNumber7]

Actually the automobile cartridges were in two different formats depending on whether they were 4-track or 8-track. The 8-tracks had the pinch roller built into the cart. 4-tracks were mechanically identical to broadcast carts. Dual-system car tape players had a deployable pinch roller - when playing 8-tracks the little roller was blocked from engagement by the physically different cart body.

Learn something new (or in this case, old) every day. I've never actually seen a 4-track cart. Sort of like I've never seen a 16 rpm record -- but I know they're out there!

 

[Savage]

16 2/3 rpm records looked exactly like 45s with the large center hole, same diameter - just slower rotational speed. Sounded horrible. That's why most of them were used for "talking books" for the blind and visually impaired. Chrysler used 16 2/3 for its auto-based "Highway Hi-Fi," but limited repertoire for the car record players and user complaints about wow, flutter and poor low-frequency response doomed the super-slow records. Most of the car players were supplanted by an improved version which played standard 45s - they were made under contract by Automatic Radio.

GRC, I do recall "Nite-Watch" - as well as an even bigger Gates automation boondoggle, "Auto-Station," which was kind of a Nite-Watch on steroids (it used a 14-inch reel crawling at 3.75 ips.) Both used the Seeburg M-series jukebox transport, which was also marketed as a background music system for stores, airports, etc. Seeburg called it "Seeburg Industrial and Commercial Music System," abbreviated SICM (wags who had to maintain and service the beast always referred to it as "Sic 'Em.")

The Seeburg M units were great and legendary in jukeboxes. But you had to maintain them. If you didn't keep the logic relays cleaned and in adjustment, the transport could go into "scan" mode with the gripper stuck in deployed mode - and the turntable unit would track along and break every record, snap-snap-snap-snap. Those were very unhappy occasions.

A local FM here once automated using two jukebox transports, but they weren't Seeburgs - IIRC they were Wurlitzer 45 units from nearby Tonawanda, NY.

 

[jfrancispastirchak]

A slightly different angle here. "Carts" hold a special meaning for me, thanks to my history of stupidly dubbing 60-second reel to reel spots on to 45-sec carts. And don't even ask why I would fail to playback and edit. These incidents all occurred at my last Albuquerque gig, the long since defunct KPAR Beautiful Music AM station. Why KPAR proved to be my "last" Duke City job should prove self-explanatory.

I just wasn't wired for the pressures of a market the size of Albuquerque, at least not at that time. I was 22-years old. I soon wound up doing time in 1970's-era Mom & Pop radio, something I've never regretted, so one could say I also owe a debt of graditude to "carts".

 

[Savage]

One more Seeburg story: the company made various versions of the M transport. You could get one in any speed - 45, 78 or 33.3 (yes, the system could play anything from 7 to 12-inch records, but only one speed per unit.) Seeburg made a bare-bones LP unit for home custom installations. I know, because my uncle, who was at the time head of the Grand Bahama Island Port Authority, got one for his beachfront home in Lucaya.

My college roommate and I flew his Cherokee 160B from New York to the Bahamas for spring break 1970 and arrived at Uncle Wayne's house, where he was perched on his sofa overlooking the Caribbean with the new Seeburg and its rats' nest of interconnecting multiconductor cables for the remote units sprawling all over the luxurious carpet. We spent days pulling cable and crawling around his sweltering attic in tropical heat, but when we were done - every room in the house had a little console with a telephone dial and SCAN and REJECT buttons on it, along with a volume control for remote speakers. Wayne, Party Animal, could dial up any LP out of 50 on the Seeburg central unit disguised in a cabinet in his living room.

The system worked great. I assume he kept the logic relays clean, because I never got any horrified phone calls about his stereo LPs getting trashed.

 

[joeybabe25]

Since there is a niche' market for lps, I was wondering if anyone still makes 4 and/or 8 track players/"playees", prerecorded reel to reel tape for consumers, reel decks, 16rpm records, and any of the old formats that we almost never see.

I imagine there are some "oldtimers" among us who still have 8 tracks in their cars(?), and I think "Columbia House" record club still sold 8 tracks well into the 80's.

But what about those formats these days?

TIA

Joe

 

[Darth_vader]

Specially-sized 16 2/3 RPM records were also used by Seeburg for their background music system. Talking books also used an 8 RPM LP format (no, I'm not kidding--see/hear https://youtube.com/watch?v=13bTMRtGOaA and https://youtube.com/watch?v=zTKFt1N9jC8) which look like regular LPs or smaller 78s, but could play for hours each side.

"Wasn't LEAR...as in Bill Lear...as in Lear-jet the promoter of one of the consumer cart formats?"

Yeah, he developed and pushed the later 8-track format, which was his "refined" version of the earlier Fidelipac, which an LA-based car dealler, Earl Muntz, used for his 4-track system. (Remember the "Lear Jet Stereo 8" brand, by chance?) Muntz also later released a line of car 8-track players, mainly as a reaction to where the market was headed. There was just no real future to the 4-track system.

Yes, the Muntz format did provide higher fidelity and the capability to hold an entire LP's worth of music without rearranging the playback order, but the ability to store an entire double-LP's worth of music in the same length of tape (at the cost of fidelity) was unfortunately much more alluring to the industry. The future was clearly in Lear's 8-track format.

...You know, it *is* possible to play a 4-track cart in an 8-track deck...

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

"Wasn't LEAR...as in Bill Lear...as in Lear-jet the promoter of one of the consumer cart formats?"

Yeah, he developed and pushed the later 8-track format, which was his "refined" version of the earlier Fidelipac, which an LA-based car dealler, Earl Muntz, used for his 4-track system.

What a party! Bill Lear and "Mad Man" Muntz.

For the younger crowd, back in the day when TV sets had not yet penetrated all that many households in this country, Mr. Muntz operated a company that sold.... how do we properly say this... economical TV sets?

Someone once ventured: Muntz interviewed engineers and selected a team of THE VERY BEST and told them to design at TV receiver that would be the lowest priced sets in the nation. He knew how to sell cars... he was sure he could sell TV sets.

"As the story goes"... he took the resumes and interviews and then selected a team of THE SECOND BEST ENGINEERS in the country and gave them a task: Every time the BEST ENGINEERS came up with a new design they said was ready for market, the SECOND BEST team took the prototypes and looked them over. One part at a time, it is reported, they clipped parts out. If the set still worked with the part missing.... they were to mark that part off the design documents. When the SECOND BEST finished their task, the marked up schematics were sent to production for manufacturing.

The story makes for a few good snickers. People who did not get the best results when they bought one of the TVs found the story believable.

We always have to have something to laugh about.