Just last week I threw out 140 Ampex 1" tape reels. I think they were 10.5" diameter but I'm keeping the head cleaning fluid :~)

not to forget the white and yellow "grease" pencils.

I only did that kind of work in school, in the late 80's. Talk about a flashback. Thanks for that...I don't miss it but I still respect the heck out of it.
I never forget how easy we have it, relatively speaking. Both audio and video.

those days are not all gone. We still do 8-track tape repair and digitizing for people. And we handle most all other tapes as well. I still have splicing blocks, razors, reel parts and pressure pads.

Gary

Back many years ago a local dance troupe gave me a CD they wanted to use for a performance track. Unfortunately they didn't have the CD until recently and their choreographer worked from his memory of the music. They learned the dance to his instruction without music. Then 4 days before the performance they finally got the CD and it wasn't the same as his memory. They also gave me a copy of the score marked with about 120 edits, asking me to remove measures and groups of measures here and there throughout the 15 minute piece.

I dubbed it over to 1/4" stereo, played the thing at 1/2 speed while reading the score, making marks on the tape as it went over the head. Then i spent a dreadful day splicing out all the cuts. Finally i dubbed it back to cassette for them to use for the last two rehearsals and the performance.

Dang. If i had had Sound Forge or Vegas back then i could have done the whole thing in a few minutes and burned it back to CD while they waited.

The worst thing about dancers is they can't adapt. If the rehearsal pianist or CD doesn't agree with the orchestra score, which they often don't hear before tech week, they expect 26 parts to be rewritten for their convenience. What's even worse is when the choreographer starts making cuts to the music without talking to the MD first, because he/she doesn't know what to do in a given spot. At least with good singers, you can say, "Vamp 2 measures at the end of the second chorus because the dancers are out of breath" and they will adapt.

It's been an incredilbly interesting day!

After meeting with my customer this morning, I'm excited and a bit honored by the task I've been asked to do.

Dr. Benjamin Mays, former President of Morehouse College in Atlanta and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, delivered the eulogy at Dr. King's funeral at Morehouse. Dr. Mays was from our hometown and has a musuem in his honor.

The curator of the museum has acquired on loan from the Mays family, the original audio tapes from the King funeral. It's these tapes they brought to be digitized, edited, etc. I've done quite a bit of archival work for museums, institutions, etc., but this is by far the most historical project I've ever worked on.

You never know what will walk through your door. I love this job!

And globs of brown stuff falling off and gumming up the works...

geoff

"And globs of brown stuff falling off and gumming up the works..."

I've built and since sold on two temperature controlled ovens specifically for baking tape. They're now doing service cooking 2" Quad videotape, 1" and UMatic.
Still have an Otari 5050 in good order and two Dolby SR encoder / decoders. Last week helped a guy find a deck with a preread head for vinyl cutting which is still quite big business.
One trick for real problem tapes that cannot be fixed even with baking, Mr Sheen! Just enough lubrication to stop the tape binding.

Bob.

I remember drooling over quadraphonic open reel recorders. You could even get quadraphonic headphones (for two ears of course). (I never got to try them.)

Bob, remember the old ovens used for TV/Radio power tubes........

"Bob, remember the old ovens used for TV/Radio power tubes........ "

The only ovens I recall from back then were for the crystals.
Biggest vacuum tube device I worked near was a 10KW Class A transmitter, 10KW of RF and 10KW of heat. Final output was a single 4CX10,000.

At least back then when something was remiss you had a minute to switch the power off before things died.

Bob.

10 kw tubes in coaxial lines for Marconi 405 line B & W TV Tx, then super steam cooled 25 kw klystrons, TWTs, ......................

How do you steam cool a 25kw klystron?
JJK

It's obvious, steam is so much cooler that the klystron's temperature and entropy dictates a flow of energy from the hotter to the cooler....;>)

As Flanders and Swann sang: "Heat won't flow from a colder to a hotter,
You can try if you like, but you far better notter..."

>>>>>>How do you steam cool a 25kw klystron?<<<<
I scratch my head and I ca not remember. !65 years since I stripped a 25 kw klystron. Googling did not help much.
I found an explanation for vapour cooling for a smaller klystron.
(http://sites.google.com/site/mybroadcastengineeringnotebook/multidepressed-collector-iot-cooling)
"Water cooling was first used on klystron tubes in the form of vapor cooling; this is where the klystron collector sits inside a boiler where pure water is introduced, and the heat of the collector would change the pure water into steam. This steam would then be delivered to the heat exchanger via steam pipes, cooled back to liquid water and then pumped back to the boiler."
Me thinks, my gray cells need some vpour cooling;-(

Correction: My memory is getting worse. Tv Transmitter for London, England, back in 1969, used 40 KW klystron ( not 25 kW ), made by Marconi. In 1990's, Pye made a pulsed klystron which used less rms power by winding down the power during field and line blanking.
I still think it was magic!!

normally, the tubes are heated to 600F plus to increase the "flow" and speed of electrons. Usually the final step leading to the antennae