by Mike Cleaver » Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:57 pm
Yes, any of those multi-deck cart players were great at saving valuable space in control rooms but if the one motor that drove all the decks failed, you were up s**t creek without a paddle!
ITC made the best ones, the triple deckers, you could slide out the individual decks and repair them without affecting the other two.
Same with the amp and control boards.
I don't recall the brand of the five slot jobs but we evaluated them at CHUM and they were absolute junk!
There was a lot of great analogue equipment built for broadcasting before computers came along but there was a lot of crap too.
Ampex Cue Mats, 12 inch floppy discs that you tried to shove into a machine, the Gates recorder/player with the 12" wide belt that you slid the head along to find the proper track, those Ampex 500 reel to reels, not to mention some of the Rube Goldberg processing for on air and the "box o' tar," the infamous Kahn Symetrapeak and those stupid 2" tape loggers.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada
54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations