by GordoGibbo » Sat Mar 09, 2013 4:39 am
Hi all, and thanks for the welcome. I think RadioWest will be a great resource for me. I've worked on various boards over my 40 - year radio career (egads!), including McCurdy sliders, Arakkis and even a series of custom-built desks back in the day when our station was owned by Thomson and unwilling to fork over the capital for new boards, so our chief engineer at the time designed and built a whole series of them. They were akin to Mechano sets, and if you hit the plastic switches too hard they would fly off and hit the wall at the back of the room. Funny as hell. But they were solid state, ran cool as a cucumber and were reliable. Piloting a Ward Beck at the station I work for now (Corus).
But I've always loved the first board I trained on and used at the beginning of my career back in the day, and have been looking for one forever to serve as the centerpiece of what will become a combination office / study / voiceover studio when we become empty-nesters. Right now my personal VO booth is in a closet and while I've got some really, really good gear in there, it's still a closet. So when we move to wherever we're going to retire to, I'm finally going to have my own space. That was the plan. The dream, of course, was to find a McCurdy and use it as the centerpiece of what would appear to look like a vintage control room (I also have a Revox tape deck that works sometimes, and even a box of 3M analog audio tape, unopened, with the shrinkwrap still on it....)
I've come close a few times to finding one. The original 10-channel board in Lindsay where I started was replaced and given to a staffer, who took it home and his son used it for awhile, but then it was binned. That was years ago, but I didn't find out what happened to it until last week. Subsequently, I discovered that when one of our Corus stations in Cornwall moved to a new building in 2007, they binned the 10-channel they had been using up to that time. They would have given the bloody thing to me, but I wasn't aware they were using one and came a few years too late to the party. But not bad, eh? A board built in, probably, 1970 and still in active service 37 years later. You couldn't say that about today's boards...
I won't say where I found this specimen, or reveal the source until after I have it in my possession (in two weeks), but it appears to be intact save for the first channel, which appears to be missing (knob and potentiometer). But I'm also wondering if it was removed, for some reason in the decommissioning process and has been tucked inside. The current owner can't get at the guts, where it happens to be stored. I haven't been out to see it myself but I don't care...after searching for one of these babies for decades, I'm taking it. I'm sure I can clean it up, and I have enough technical friends to give me a hand with the restoration, which will take some time...but since we're a few years from moving at least, I've got the time now. Meanwhile I'n hoping and praying the current owner will be able to find the missing piece, as the board appears to be intact from the front save for that one pot. Maybe I can have at least the knob re-manufactured, although it would probably cost me a fortune. Failing that, I was walking home the other day and thought it would be funny to slip a pull-cord from an outboard motor into that channel, just for fun.
I've got two pics the current owner sent along, but don't know how to attach them.
Anyway, nice to meet you fellows, and Mike Cleaver, I used to listen to you on CHUM back in the day. Pleased to meet you...