RWels
Member
Posts: 2,857
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Post by RWels on Jul 14, 2021 9:04:34 GMT
Not even sure if this is real?!
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Jul 14, 2021 22:33:15 GMT
Not even sure if this is real?! It's impressive. I would like to know what chemical was used on the tape; I suspect eucalyptus oil. It would then need to be dried prior to baking. Personally I would not have used a file to removed the corrosion from the reel core. Perhaps a vacuum and sandpaper would have prevented dust ingress. The replay was impressive the first time round. He used a VR1200 to playback; you saw tape residue settling on the machine surfaces after the replay. He did that after tape cleaning with the recortec machine to clear any gunk off the tape so he would have a better chance of getting a replay on his nice AVR1. The difference is that a VR1200 is an entirely analogue machine from 1966 onwards with a simple tape path, the AVR1 used glass delay lines to correct timing errors from its tbc. Only 500 were made but quite a few are still about and working. The Science Museum in the UK have one of Anglia TV's, donated in 1997. The ability to not reference the damaged control track is genius, hence all the work to recover the image. Very impressive restoration work. |
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Post by Simon B Kelly on Jul 15, 2021 4:03:39 GMT
It's nice to see that there are still well-maintained machines out there, and operators who know how to get the best possible playback. The worrying part is that they always appear to be elderly gentleman. Hopefully they're passing their knowledge on to the next generation. I fear we may lose all our skilled professionals soon and tapes will turn up that no-one knows how to recover...
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Post by Peter Bradford on Jan 20, 2022 13:10:49 GMT
It's nice to see that there are still well-maintained machines out there, and operators who know how to get the best possible playback. The worrying part is that they always appear to be elderly gentleman. Hopefully they're passing their knowledge on to the next generation. I fear we may lose all our skilled professionals soon and tapes will turn up that no-one knows how to recover... Sorry to have resurrected this old thread - I don’t come here very often these days. I guess I am one of those ‘elderly gentlemen’ who used to work on and maintain this old kit. You are right that there are not many of us left! A couple of points on the clip above if I may ? The Recortec machine that Paul mentions was a pretty standard item in any large broadcasters itinerary and was used to clean and assess the quality of the tape. The tape leaves the supply spool and was bulk erased and then passed over a delicate ‘scraper’. This was originally a wide ‘blade’ of a quartz like material that the tape rode over and the scraping action loosened debris on the surface of the tape. A little further downstream of the scraper was a slotted vacuum post that also sat across the width of the tape to suck up any debris that had just been loosened. Another head then recorded an RF signal across the width of the tape and this was then picked up by a playback head further downstream. If the playback head did not pick up the signal it ‘assumed’ there was a problem with the recording surface of the tape and it registered it on a counter as a ‘dropout’. The tape then passed to the take up spool. A tape was allowed so many dropouts/minute and I guess each broadcaster had their own limit as to what was acceptable or not, tapes over that limit were scrapped. In the end we could not source the ‘quartz’ blades and the mechs devised a sort of flexible fibreglass tape replacement that performed the same function. That’s how it sort of worked and it did it at many times the normal tape speed of 15.625ips. The AVR 1 machine he ended up using was designed by Ampex to be pretty much hands off, put the tape on and thread it up and off you go. He explained that the tape had a damaged ‘control track’ which was normally essential to replay a quad tape. He puts the machine into the ‘don’t use the control’ mode and it indeed ignores the control track and ‘flutters’ the tape continuously across the video heads to workout where it needs to put the tape instead of trying to use the damaged control track. (Probably a bit too technical there!). Surprised to read that Anglia TV had one? I know Southern had one and I know the BBC had one too - I wonder where they ended up? |
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Greg Glenn
Member
Carl Palmer art! Tank!
Posts: 55
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Post by Greg Glenn on Jan 21, 2022 9:16:56 GMT
I have two large 2" reels: one from 1963 looks new, one from the later 60s looks really bad. Not as bad as this but not playable either. Maybe I should send it to this guy and let him clear it up. No idea what’s on it.
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Greg Glenn
Member
Carl Palmer art! Tank!
Posts: 55
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Post by Greg Glenn on Jan 21, 2022 9:26:22 GMT
 Holy cow, just watched this and realized this is a show I used to watch as a kid in the 1970s called Grunches and Grins. I’m from Alabama and this show ran on Alabama Public Television. "Grunches and Grins was a TV show on Alabama Public TV from the early 1970's to the mid-'90's. It featured Sara McDaris who did storytime at the Huntsville Public Library in the late '60's/early '70's along with Tyro (a puppet) and local Huntsville kids. The show was taped at Huntsville ETV on Monte Sano Mountain. It was on the 9-station APT network (including Birmingham/Montgomery/Mobile/Florence/Dothan/Huntsville) 2 days a week in the afternoon kids cluster of shows. Sara McDaris has been active at WLRH since they signed on in 1976 and a nationally- acclaimed storyteller. All master tapes of the show were destroyed in 2002 as the ETV Center caught on fire and the archives were destroyed." Still don’t know what a Grunch is though…… |
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