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LEGENDS 102.7: NOW THAT'S VARIETY FOR YOU!!

Paul Warren's comment about Magnecord PT6's summoned up another forgotten-but-funny from 1967.

As Paul notes, the Maggies did not have sophisticated transports. They had very iffy brakes and reel drive motors that, I swear, must have been about 1/4 horsepower - they could rewind a 7-inch reel in 30 seconds and were kinda scary when fast-winding. The machines had little knurled springs for reel locks, and occasionally would throw one during rewind - I saw a Maggie reel lock once fly off and imbed itself in the acoustic tile wall at WELM.

Anyway, as I have noted, at WLEA the PT6 was rack-mounted on the far side of the control room. I was doing a newscast and took my break and rolled a taped spot. Normally as soon as the commercial ended you'd slip the switch and the brakeless Maggie would coast to a stop, but this time the switch shorted. As I continued with the rest of the cast, the tape ran out off the supply reel and, freed of the capstans' restraint, suddenly started wildly spinning flappity-flappity-flappity from its Dodge Viper takeup motor.

By the time I hurriedly finished the cast amidst the Maggie racket and got over to stop it manually, the reels were both empty and Earle Jerris' Tobins First Prize commercials had been reduced to thousands of quarter-inch shards of tape covering the control room floor.
 
Savage said:
By the time I hurriedly finished the cast amidst the Maggie racket and got over to stop it manually, the reels were both empty and Earle Jerris' Tobins First Prize commercials had been reduced to thousands of quarter-inch shards of tape covering the control room floor.
Click to expand...

You no doubt picked up and meticulously spliced together that Maggie Shrapnel using your personal EditAll, because like all good jocks and production guys, you carried an EditAll, splicing tape and razor blades with you at all times. ;)
I once became a bit too impatient with a rewinding Ampex 440-C and after slowing it down by rocking FF to RW a few times, put my open hand on the still rotating 10 inch aluminum take up reel. Not smart. Sliced my thumb and bled like a stuck pig. Got home and realized a trip to the emergency room was in order. Two stitches.
 
Bob Savage sagely remarks, "the real problems facing radio these days are entirely self-imposed. If we unplug the jukeboxes and start having people talk to people again, and boot the Wall Street bean-counters, the listeners will come back. That's why talk radio is the industry's biggest success story over the past 20 years."

Now, all we have to do is mobilize to get the concept of local personality radio planted once again in the minds of TPTB. Since it'll represent a major paradigm shift away from today's dysfunctionally depersonalized and increasingly unprofitable way of doing radio business, we'll find that the station owners who survive this recession will probably be very receptive to the idea.
 
I STILL carry an EditAll with me, Jimbo! :D You never know when you might need it....

And still in the supply closet here at WYSL....a couple unopened packages each of Scotch #41 splicing tape and nonsterile single-edge razor blades. No kidding! They're kinda nostalgic.

Bob1370/1520, more transcription memories - don't know if you recall or noticed, but almost all of the original WKBW PAMS jingles and production elements were still stowed on their original ET discs in the control room at 1430 Main Street. In typical ET fashion, the discs had multiple identical cuts, IIRC five of each, in case one got scratched or worn. I remember listening to them in cue out of boredom early Sunday mornings, and also chatting about those discs with Tom Atkins the second time I was at KB in 1986. I think he told me the discs were saved.

Similarly a huge ET cache of WBBF intros, jingles, promos and commercials from the late 50s and early 60s were unearthed out at the old studio-transmitter building on South Clinton when I was PD there 1975-77. They were stashed along with a quantity of still-unused blank discs in the cabinet of BBF's dusty RCA transcription lathe. I brought some of 'em back to Midtown to play; back then there were still Gates 16-inch turntables in the main control room. Last I saw that stuff was shortly before I left for Pittsburgh in spring '77. I hope that material was preserved in its original form.
 
You posters are showing support ;D I was thinking last night - realize folks, that in the (hypothetical - of course) event a killer virus (a la Y2K) were to wreak havoc on the hard drives running the industry right now...tymp please - there are only a handful of us that would even know how to man the dusty ITC's...roll the turntables...talk and actually say something without liner cards....you get the picture. Only problem is to find the relics!!

RCS - "Now, all we have to do is mobilize to get the concept of local personality radio planted once again in the minds of TPTB. Since it'll represent a major paradigm shift away from today's dysfunctionally depersonalized and increasingly unprofitable way of doing radio business, we'll find that the station owners who survive this recession will probably be very receptive to the idea"

Simple reply Mr. Savage - ;D ;D ;D
 
heydaybegone said:
You posters are showing support ;D I was thinking last night - realize folks, that in the (hypothetical - of course) event a killer virus (a la Y2K) were to wreak havoc on the hard drives running the industry right now...
Click to expand...


Don't be sayin' this stuff HDBG.

:eek:

Just minutes ago, I completed the process of transfering more than 400 drop-ins, soundbites and sound effects from cart to WAV files on my new 500G hard drive. Although no heavy lifting was involved, it was an arduous process. Being a free-agent these days, I'm taking care of projects that had been put off for years.

An Otari CTM-10 cart machine was used and, toward the end of the job, had a pinch roller solenoid in need of Cialis. Oy, we can see the wheels turning in Savage's head already. Behave! Not wanting to tear the cart machine apart, a #2 pencil, eraser end was employed on the gear assembly to help the solenoid rise to the occasion.

A good amount of denatured alcohol and swabs were were used to keep the heads and capstan clean. The pinch roller? Ugh! Surprisingly, the ScotchCarts left the most residue on the heads and capstan. The best carts were the Fidelipac GoldCarts. There was but one gray Fidelipac in the mess, pressure pads so beat, it defied transfer. That drop-in was something that could found on the web, so no problem. Some of the carts were 86'd, but most are being bulked and donated to the WNY Radio Reading Service for the Blind. Now to back all of those files up on CD and an external drive. It's always something.
 
JimPastrick said:
Don't be sayin' this stuff HDBG.
:eek:
Just minutes ago, I completed the process of transfering more than 400 drop-ins, soundbites and sound effects from cart to WAV files on my new 500G hard drive. Although no heavy lifting was involved, it was an arduous process. Being a free-agent these days, I'm taking care of projects that had been put off for years.

An Otari CTM-10 cart machine was used and, toward the end of the job, had a pinch roller solenoid in need of Cialis. Oy, we can see the wheels turning in Savage's head already. Behave! Not wanting to tear the cart machine apart, a #2 pencil, eraser end was employed on the gear assembly to help the solenoid rise to the occasion.

A good amount of denatured alcohol and swabs were were used to keep the heads and capstan clean. The pinch roller? Ugh! Surprisingly, the ScotchCarts left the most residue on the heads and capstan. The best carts were the Fidelipac GoldCarts. There was but one gray Fidelipac in the mess, pressure pads so beat, it defied transfer. That drop-in was something that could found on the web, so no problem. Some of the carts were 86'd, but most are being bulked and donated to the WNY Radio Reading Service for the Blind. Now to back all of those files up on CD and an external drive. It's always something.
Click to expand...
::)
I'd love to see you use the #2 pencil eraser on the hard drive - LOL. With technology comes dilema. You pretty much wrapped up a normal maintenance day for the jocks of the past though!! Dang I miss that!! JP- don't worry - my point was focused on "broadcasting facilities"....like sudden dead air - no tunes-no voices- no EBS tests!!. I was not thinking of the pirated collections of "drop-ins, sound bites, and sound effects" we all have (and have NO IDEA where they came from ;)). Heck...they're best to be transferred to a high tech medium before the tape dries out.
 
qman said:
EBS! LOL Dating yourself eh H?
Click to expand...
Yuppers. Rename it what cha want to fit the times! Just keeping in synch with the thread. BTW - I haven't decided which sounder I prefer better to alert me to the place to go for news and official information. Doesn't much matter - will anybody know ???
 
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