[QuadList] Quad Carts--Links to RCA and Ampex photo examples

[Gary Adams]

Just to provide the other view.  The doors covered the tape fairly well.
These were the 3 minute versions, but the one minute carts were more
commonly used.  It was interesting that Scotch 400 tape was used and
recommended.  When 420 came out, it clearly had a better picture with less
noise or "chroma spread" but the tape had serious issues with "stiction" in
the machine.  The smooth surface against the posts and audio head assembly
caused the tape to stall after it was cued and ready to go.  I spent quite a
bit of time at customer sites sorting this out after they rebuilt carts
using 420 tape.  It was easy to demonstrate.  Too bad since the picture was
noticeably better.  

 

While both RCA and Ampex carts produced proper quad recordings, I'm fairly
certain the procedure of removing the tape and playing it on a quad was
seldom used.  Even at our low end station, we always had the original quads
on the shelf.  It would have been a lot of trouble to actually perform the
complete task.  And they wouldn't have easily been interchangeable between
machines since both used a different method of cueing (timecode vs. tones)
and the end of tape sensing would have been different.  Not efficient in any
case.  We were luck to have either of these machines in the day as it really
freed up the manual task of loading 2-4 quad machines for a break.

 

Gary

 



 

-----Original Message-----
From: quadlist-bounces at quadvideotapegroup.com
[mailto:quadlist-bounces at quadvideotapegroup.com] On Behalf Of Dennis Degan
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 9:37 AM
To: Quad List
Subject: Re: [QuadList] Quad Carts--Links to RCA and Ampex photo examples

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://quadvideotapegroup.com/pipermail/quadlist_quadvideotapegroup.com/attachments/20120816/251e0419/attachment-0004.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 383846 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://quadvideotapegroup.com/pipermail/quadlist_quadvideotapegroup.com/attachments/20120816/251e0419/attachment-0002.png>