[QuadList] Rebuilding RCA TR-600s

[Rob Lingelbach]

On Sep 8, 2009, at 4:57 PM, Gary Adams wrote:
>  If it exceeds the TBC window, then you need to find another TBC (or  
> an Ampex J).  I loved my job but I loved Ampex machines too.


We had about 12 TR600s at Unitel in New York City during the 1970s and  
80s.  It was the first recorder that I learned to operate, and we  
regularly loaded one and sometimes two of them into our remote trucks  
to do location shoots.

One of the trucks was a former Philadelphia bread delivery van and had  
no air conditioning.  We had some pretty good engineers keeping the  
Norelco PC70 and
PC90 cameras happy, and I don't remember much downtime from our mobile  
TR600s.
We offloaded them back into the studio on 57th Street after the  
remotes, so they could be used for studio shoots.   Often the location  
and studio shoots used the VTRs iso-fed, with no camera switching  
during during production.  I remember operating 3 TR600s for studio  
shoots with 3 logs to keep, 3 lockups to confirm, and a very quick and  
detailed description in mind to write on each log, including the  
Director's comments as heard through the headset.

I saw the dense backplane of the TR600 and learned about wire-wrap.   
It didn't make sense that its connections could be better than  
soldering, but I was assured that with the wire contacting 4 corners  
of a squared post numerous times that it was even better than solder.

When I moved into the edit rooms as an assistant and then later as an  
editor, I worked with 4 TR600s under CMX (I-squared) control.    
Eventually I became the editor-in-charge of the older edit room,  
outfitted with Editec, 3-Ampex VR2000's, 1-TR600, a Sony BVH-1100  
(later 1200, later 2000), a Grass Valley 1100 switcher with Richmond  
Hill downstream keyer/fader, 2 b+w title cameras, an animation stand  
with downshooting Thomson Microcam, and an Ampex HS-200 programmable  
disk.  I learned how to keep all this equipment working and optimized;  
edits were performed with clients in the room 'live,' timing the  
prerolls (no timecode) so that a group-start switch gave me a few  
seconds to confirm lock and then go through the motions at the  
switcher, dissolving, cutting, keying, to audio track.

In retrospect, the VR2000's were certainly better suited to their  
tasks, but I still always loved the THrUnK-Pssh  of the TR600's  
transport controls.   Left out of this revisionist memory is the  
horror of the occasional half-cycle H-shift at match-edit points.   
Another item worthy of mention is the annealing of an artist's  
temperament that working with New York advertising clients requires.

--  
Rob Lingelbach     http://www.colorist.org/robhome.html
rob at colorist.org









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