Replying to a message of Roy J. Tellason to Leonard Erickson:

 RJT> Leonard Erickson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RJT>  -=> Quoting Roy J. Tellason to Bob Ackley <=-

 RJT>> Bob Ackley wrote in a message to RUSSELL TIEDT:

 RJT>> I've seen speeds of half that.  But like you say,  not much
 RJT>> fidelity.  I was at a radio station one time that was pretty
 RJT>> heavily automated,  and a lot of what was going out over the air
 RJT>> was on either "carts" or on big reels of tape, 
which seemed to
 RJT>> pretty much *crawl*,  compared to the way I was used to seeing them
 RJT>> move. 

 LE>> Well, I think those cartridges use wider tape and something like
 LE>> the "helical scan" used on VCRs, so the track is a series of
 LE>> diagoinal stripes laide down by a spinning head, set at an angle to
 LE>> the tape. That way the speed of the tape past the *head* is faster
 LE>> than the speed thru the tape transport rollers.

 RJT> That sounds like the way DAT works,  if I'm not mistaken.  No,  these
 RJT> were standard broadcast "carts",  which,  if I'm
remembering right, 
 RJT> run at 3-3/4 ips.

Broadcast carts ran at 7.5 ips and came in two sizes.  The small cart was
almost exactly the size of an 8-track cart and the big one was about eight
inches square IIRC.  I lent my cart machine to a local radio station for a
promo they were doing and they never gave it back.

 RJT>  It was the reels I was referring to as "crawling"
 RJT> -- they were 10.5" reels,  of what appeared to be standard quarter
 RJT> inch tape.

Got some of them, too.  Most were recorded at 7.5 ips.  I managed to get
about 24 hours of material on one 10.5 inch reel at 1.875 ips.

 RJT> I'm thinking this was one of those "easy listening"
stations,  where
 RJT> stuff that gets played is *so* processed that fidelity isn't a major
 RJT> concern.

 RJT>> Wow.  Are the old records marked,  or what?  I have some vague
 RJT>> recollection of some sort of a mechanical speed control,  that would
 RJT>> vary it just a bit.  This may have been on an *acoustic* record
 RJT>> player -- no electronics in it at all.  I've seen a few of them. 

 LE>> When I was a kid we had one of those old wind up record players for
 LE>> quite a few years. 

 RJT> I've seen a bunch of that sort of thing,  though not in recent years. 
 RJT> A number of years ago I knew a guy who collected that kind of thing. 
 RJT> I'd help out with the electronics portions,  while he re-did the
 RJT> cabinetry.  Usually that involved changing out some tubes,  and
 RJT> replacing *all* of the old paper capacitors with mylar ones,  plus
 RJT> the power supply filters.

Actually the originals had mechanical amplifiers, electronics didn't come
into widespread use in the recording industry until the mid 1920s.

I can understand why you don't see many.  If one appears at an auction
around here it'll bring about $400 (not from me, I already have one
), without any records.

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