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The LP turns 65

Not quite sure I understand the rationale for dubbing agency ETs to reel tapes - unless the spots were institutional long-term schedules, where the same commercials would be played over and over for months, and ET wear and dirt would arise as an issue. The typical reason why spots on ET were carted was convenience - it takes less than a second to stick a cart in a cart machine and it's ready for play, which speeds up control room operations like crazy. Cueing up an ET takes at least ten times as long, even for an experienced operator.

Cueing up a cut on a tape reel takes as long as cueing up a transcription disc, plus reel to reel tape is as fragile as a record (it can stretch, break on rewind, etc.) This practice must have been due to concerns about ET wear from repeated daily playings.
 
Savage said:
Not quite sure I understand the rationale for dubbing agency ETs to reel tapes
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In almost all the cases where this was done that I saw... and for a while in the late 50's and early 60's I must have visited 400 to 500 stations... each spot was dubbed on a 3" or a 5" reel and labeled. Some stations even put leader on the tape right up to the audio start to make it easier to cue.

The reasoning was that acetates deteriorated right from the first play, and were fragile and clunky.

This practice must have been due to concerns about ET wear from repeated daily playings.
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The period of time when ETs were used by local stations to broadcast spots was a period where typical orders were for 10 or 12 spots a day... a lot of wear.

In the mid 60's, my little cluster of 9 stations would get 50 or 60 ETs a month, and many orders were for 20 spots a day.

As an interesting sidebar, in Puerto Rico agencies decided somewhere around 1966 or 1967 that it was better to send prerecorded cartridges to stations instead of ETs. From that time on, and extending into the 90's, all agency spots arrived at stations on carts. They also required that "expired copy" be returned immediately to prevent the wrong copy from running.

This was an important step, as the major stations did about 90% or better of their business with agencies.
 
RadioFan2J3 said:
As for the rack mounted 500 series units, I can assure you all the ones we had at VOA C Site indeed had belt drives. Replaced many a belt on those machines.
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I had a small number (4 or 5... can't quite remember) of the rack mount model, all bought after 1966, and they were direct drive.

As for the Tapecaster 700 series, that machine may have had a different loading mechanism, as best as I can tell from the few photos, there might have been two mechanically models under the 700 series. parts of the cocking lever Viking decks which I remember:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Lauderdale_Electronics_Labs-1985.pdf
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I standardized on Tapecasters, both mono and stereo, in about 1967 and accumulated about 40 or so of them. I made a couple of visits to Paul Shore in suburban Maryland to arrange purchases and some unique shipping of parts, so I was pretty familiar with the machines,
and I think the first models had those "spaghetti" bands (or belts which were round and not flat) but later they had direct drive Pabst motors.

I added some additional cart manuals to the site, including the BeauCart and the 70's and 80's ITC models for comparison.
 
DavidEduardo said:
DavidEduardo said:
I added some additional cart manuals to the site, including the BeauCart and the 70's and 80's ITC models for comparison.
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I also added some additional Spotmaster manuals... including the later 500c and 505c as well as the 300, 2000 and 4000 series machines.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Equipment_Catalogs_Master_Page.htm
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Thanks for adding the additional manuals. Your site is a great resource.

The Spotmaster 500C and 505C both used the separate motor and capstan, using the motor belts, as Spotmaster calls them.

Do you happen to have a 500D and 505D series manual to post? It would appear if the C series was still using the belt drive, the earlier series would also be belt drive. I think the D series was the last of the 500/505 units.
 
RadioFan2J3 said:
Do you happen to have a 500D and 505D series manual to post? It would appear if the C series was still using the belt drive, the earlier series would also be belt drive. I think the D series was the last of the 500/505 units.
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I don't have the D... I put all the manuals for cart machines I have up today.

- anyone who has any manuals or catalogs to loan for scanning (or just wants to get rid of) contact me via the site eMail and I'll even send prepaid mailing or UPS labels for you.


As we talk about this, it's likely a good idea to remember that those "belts" were not belts in the sense of a conveyor belt... a flat and flexible band of considerable width. Most were like a strand of spaghetti made into a loop... a round single strand of some rubbery substance. But other than "belt" I don't know what to call them.

Most, in Murphy's best fashion, were guaranteed to break around 1 AM, producing phone calls from overnight "talent" who generally had difficulties in explaining anything technical (unless they went to Elkins or REI, in which case they were dangerous).
 
Yes, splicing a leader to the beginning of audio on an audio tape was a convenient way to simplify cueing. You just stopped the tape with the splice just west of the head assembly. In reality, though, when most agency spots came in the "traffic and copy girl" (this was 1967) just stuck the reel in the rack, so you wound up cueing it manually on the blasted PT-6.

I don't know what the practices were in Latin America in the 60s. But here in the good ol' E-U:

a. Nobody used 3-inch reels on-air. None of the professional tape transports of the day - Ampex, Magnecord, Presto, Berlant-Concertone, etc. - would play really small reels without stretching the tape. Tiny reels produced too much tension on the tape. Most agency spots were played off "tension-type" large-diameter hub 5-inch reels. 3-inch reels were really a consumer-type item used for voice letters and home-type machines. If a 3-inch reel was encountered (and some advertisers used them to mail spots if they were really cheap) the tape was immediately transferred to a larger reel so it wouldn't be eaten on the first playback.

b. By the mid-60s the vast majority of agency ETs sent to radio stations were vinylite pressings, not original acetate ETs (they were still called ETs, though.) These came in 10 and 12-inch microgroove formats, usually single-faced with just a design pressed into the reverse side. Some feature movies and car companies came on 7-inch 45 rpm ETs to get the higher speed and better quality, but interestingly these 45 ETs came with the smaller center hole as opposed to the usual 1-inch hole music 45s had. Presumably this was to ensure longer life without wear and distortion in typical station use.

You visited "400 to 500 radio stations" in the late 50s and early 60s? You must have been a busy lad. Given the population of US radio stations around 1960 at about 4200, you stopped by the equivalent of 10 to 15% of all the stations in Gringoland. Pretty darn impressive.
 
In a weird turnabout of the "no-dub" policy, one day as a high-school parttimer in my first radio gig in '67, I was handed co-op materials from the local Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth dealer for the "Dodge Rebellion" campaign. They included "radio commercials" on one of those blasted SoundSheets that used to be bound into magazines and pasted on the back of cereal boxes! The SoundSheet breezily advised, "STATIONS: This record not intended for direct playback on-air. Please dub to tape as soon as possible." That proved easier said than done on the production 2-speed Gates transcription TTs which dated to 1951. As I tried to run the spots off onto the Samsonite Ampex which was hooked into the Gates Producer, I heard distortion and noticed that the viscous-damped tonearm/VRII combination was neatly removing all the grooves as the flexible disc played. The dub was a one-pass, one-shot make it or break it proposition.
 
Savage said:
a. Nobody used 3-inch reels on-air. None of the professional tape transports of the day - Ampex, Magnecord, Presto, Berlant-Concertone, etc. - would play really small reels without stretching the tape. Tiny reels produced too much tension on the tape. Most agency spots were played off "tension-type" large-diameter hub 5-inch reels. 3-inch reels were really a consumer-type item used for voice letters and home-type machines. If a 3-inch reel was encountered (and some advertisers used them to mail spots if they were really cheap) the tape was immediately transferred to a larger reel so it wouldn't be eaten on the first playback.
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I would say that depends on what part of the country your were in, and market size, and timing. Yes, by 1967 we were basically in the CART business and there were not a lot of small reels in use.

I started in 1956. Rural south. We were up to our belly-buttons in 3-inch reels. I didn't know "spots" could live on anything else.

You got pressed microgroove discs of commercials if it was a national campaign, a national agency. If you were in Little Rock or Tulsa or maybe Indianapolis, even in the mid 60s you could still get some acetate ETs from local and regional agencies, though 7-inch and 5-inch tape reels were the delivery method of local agencies.

Yes, David was even more active than I was in the "Busman's Holiday" activities. In the era when we had 4,000 to 5,000 radio stations, I stuck my head in and sized up 300 of them. I've seen a few Taj Mahals and a lot of really crummy dumps!

When I went for a job interview, or if on my own time I just wanted to see a station, I developed my own routine for deciding if I was interested in working for a station. I wanted to see two things in a station: The rest room.... and the engineer's shop and workbench. They were sure-fire signals about the integrity and skill of MANAGEMENT. If a station owner/manager was content with a dirty, smelly, stained up rest-room, you knew he/she would be a bitch to work for. If the engineers work space didn't exist, was not well kept, you knew you would not like the value system of the owner and/or the manager.
 
Savage said:
a. Nobody used 3-inch reels on-air. None of the professional tape transports of the day - Ampex, Magnecord, Presto, Berlant-Concertone, etc. - would play really small reels without stretching the tape.
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At my first job, at WCUY and WJMO, they used 3" and 5" reels for all spots, and had masonite racks for them. The FM studio, which is where I spent most of the time, had one of the "samsonite" small maggies, and it played three inchers OK. They did get pretty beaten up after a while, but since 5" reels were more expensive, UBC did not like buying many of them... the ones we had were recycled and the notches in the whole that grabbed the spindle were well worn and caused lots of flutter.

My summers at WCCW included playing lots of stuff off threes and fives on Sony 777 decks. Those were beautiful consumer decks, better than much pro gear.

b. By the mid-60s the vast majority of agency ETs sent to radio stations were vinylite pressings, not original acetate ETs (they were still called ETs, though.)
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As I said, most of my station visiting was in the 1958 to 1963 period. By '64 I had my time restricted by having to run a radio station.


You visited "400 to 500 radio stations" in the late 50s and early 60s? You must have been a busy lad. Given the population of US radio stations around 1960 at about 4200, you stopped by the equivalent of 10 to 15% of all the stations in Gringoland. Pretty darn impressive.
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About half were in the US, the rest in Mexico, Central America, Panama and Colombia. The US ones ranged from WJW, WJBK, WWVA, WSPD and KGBS (I felt the need to check up on Storer as I had about 10 shares of stock) to every station in San Francisco and Cleveland down to all the stations anywhere near the highway any place my family went to vacation... WAPE to WSOO to I-forget-the-calls on 1480 in Santa Maria, CA. Ludington, Manistee, Muskegon, Coldwater, Lansing, Big Rapids, Alpena, Petoskey, Grand Haven, and all kinds of smaller market stations in Ohio.
 
DavidEduardo said:
-As we talk about this, it's likely a good idea to remember that those "belts" were not belts in the sense of a conveyor belt... a flat and flexible band of considerable width. Most were like a strand of spaghetti made into a loop... a round single strand of some rubbery substance. But other than "belt" I don't know what to call them.

Most, in Murphy's best fashion, were guaranteed to break around 1 AM, producing phone calls from overnight "talent" who generally had difficulties in explaining anything technical (unless they went to Elkins or REI, in which case they were dangerous).
Click to expand...

Right, and yes, the belts indeed were very thin yet long O-rings. The term motor belt was taken from the Spotmaster parts list.
 
The first station I worked at, part time, far too many years ago, all the spots were on tape and we had two Ampex 600 series in the control room. The cables to the erase head and record head were disconnected to prevent accidental erasure.

As best as I recall, nothing was on 3-inch reels, as previous posters have mentioned, the Ampex did not pull tape very well off a 3-inch supply reel.
 
RadioFan2J3 said:
As best as I recall, nothing was on 3-inch reels, as previous posters have mentioned, the Ampex did not pull tape very well off a 3-inch supply reel.
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Yeah, the 5" ones with the bigger wind hub seemed to be the best for spots. Also, here were "nesting boxes" for the 5's and the 3's would only go in those tuck tab boxes which tore after about 3 or 4 opens and closes.
 
I was in Target in Jackson, TN a few weeks back and they had a display of new vinyl LPs, mostly from Capitol. I saw several different Beatles albums and Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits among them. The price was $19.95 on most of them.

I have a niece that works at Hastings, a music, book, and video chain, in Murfreesboro, TN outside Nashville, and she said that they have started buying and selling used vinyl because of the increase in demand.
 
I started working at small stations in metro Atlanta in 1965. I can't recall any station still using small reels for spots unless a cart machine was down and the reel was being used in an emergency.. I remember doing that.
I certainly remember ET's for short form programming all the way into the early 70's when I was working at WPLO-AM. I ran a veteran's program at 330 in the morning that was 15 min in length. By the 70's stations in my area were mixed on turntables/carts for music. By the early 80's it was certainly all carts for playlist music. Usually there were only 2 turntables in studios I worked at during the 60's. We would play about 90% 45's and I remember on many occasions forgetting to change the turntable speed when I went from an LP back to a 45. I can't remember a station with a dedicated 33 turntable. When I started I slip cued the discs, it took me a while to break the habit. It certainly freed my left hand up when I stopped slip cuing.
 
Scott Fybush said:
While there had been experimental microgroove recordings prior to 1948, and even some limited commercial uses, there were no consumer microgroove formats prior to the introduction of the LP....
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Actually there was. In the late 1920s, Edison made a microgroove long playing disc record that came in 24 and 40 minute varieties and even played at 80 RPM (hill/dale too.) It wasn't a big seller, but it was offered to consumers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVfuFfwtqIg

So were the 1930s RCA Program Transcription discs. The first consumer 33 1/3 RPM disc. "Program Transcription" never caught on with the general public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Gf5AK1DQI (Ghastly looking and functioning thing, isn't it?)
 
Ahh, yes - the infamous RCA Victor "cobra-head" magnetic pickup from 1931. The horseshoe magnet on early electrical pickups (1927 on) adversely affected what we call "compliance" today. The vibratory forces side-to-side would sometimes force the needle out of the groove, causing the tonearm to go skittering across the surface of the disc.

RCA engineers' solution was to place counterweights on either side of the tonearm to counteract the torsional twisting of the pickup on loud passages. Voila: the cobra-head pickup. Of course, this had the effect of increasing the tracking force of the pickup still FURTHER but.....ahh well, what's a little excess record wear among friends?

I understand that a lot of those 33.3 rpm "transcriptions" weren't pressed in the usual shellac but in a kind of flexible plastic RCA called "Vitrolac." ("Victrola" with the letters rearranged...so clever!) I also read somewhere that you were supposed to play those early LPs with a special chromium-plated needle, and that the massive magnet and flaking chrome ate those "transcriptions" alive.

The problem of the magnetic pickups' weight on records was solved in the mid-30s by development of the lightweight crystal cartridge.
 
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