[QuadList] Rebuilding RCA TR-600s

[Rob Lingelbach]

Hi Dennis,

On Sep 9, 2009, at 8:02 PM, Dennis Degan wrote:

> 	Rob, you must have known John Tierney then.

Yes indeed.  I was there 1976-1983 at 510 w. 57th and also down the  
alley at Studio 2 between MPCS and CBS.   It was kind of a college of  
Film and TV production and post-production for me; John T. was one of  
a few leading figures.  Others were Art Dome, Ted Dunn, Thom Forbes,  
Frank Herold, Al Geisler, Ron Ranieri, Paul Dougherty.

> 	I worked at Unitel for 12 years, starting in 1987.

aha.  Then there would be many others whom we both know.   Funny thing  
was, I spent 7 years at Editel L.A. starting in 1990, and then Unitel  
bought Editel, so then I was working for the same guys again (Barry,  
Al, Herb).

>  Some of those TR-600's ended their life as dubbing machines in the  
> Unitel dubbing room at the back of 515 West 57th Street, across the  
> street from the original Unitel building.

ah, right.  Dubbing was my penance for wanting to get into editing.  I  
spent 8 months in sheer hell on the night shift 10pm to 6am (often  
until 9-10am) running up to 15 2-inch machines with 90 minute reels,  
shipping out 500 or more dubs of inane commercials like Stouffer's  
frozen dinners or....  they really became absurd when you had to watch  
the playback constantly 100 times for signs of trouble, while running  
those 15 record machines, timing your record run between floors so  
that the formatting of the copies would go without a hitch.

I know that engineers liked the Ampex quadruplex machines better, and  
they did become, in the 1200 and 2000 versions my favorites too, but  
the TR600s at Unitel were pretty reliable when I think back on them.

The most fun was had working on the Crazy Eddie commercials- the  
shoots were insane, then the edits, then the dubbing, all for the  
deranged and likably fun Jay Dubin, Director/Producer.

Rob
--  
Rob Lingelbach  Colorist, Consultant.   TIG admin  http://www.colorist.org
rob at colorist.org  KB6CUN/PY  São Paulo, Brasil