[QuadList] OT: Ampex Engineering

[Steve Spears]

RCA developed the little "very very high gain" Nuvistor tube,  in the late fifties, for the much more refined and affordable next generation color TV line. The "NewVista" (tuner) sales tag logo went on the sets around 1960 in the CTC-12 era. The Nuvistor RF amp in the front end of the tuner, for color reception out on the fringes from all of those fifty foot high rooftop antenna's made all the difference in the world and left RCA's #1 competitor, Zenith, in the dust as far as tuner gain went.

It did'nt take Ampex (probably Charlie Ginsburg) very long to call up RCA and say how about send us a crate'full'a those hot little devils.

My Ampex VR-1000C (1960) here, has a Mark 10 head with a Nuvistor front end.

We're just finishing up a very nice what you migth call a "springwinter" this year. How sweet it is.

Steve Spears
Orrs Island, Maine
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Scott Thomas 
  To: Quad List 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:51 AM
  Subject: [QuadList] OT: Ampex Engineering


  I was reading up on what Nuvistors were, I knew they were tubes from the many discussion of headwheel preamps here, but I didn't know much beyond that.
  On Wikipedia they mentioned an Ampex audio tape recorder called a MR70 that used Nuvistors extensively and I started researching that.


  I found this video on someone's restoration of a MR70


  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIDHs3kmGj4


  What I find interesting about this is the consistency in how Ampex tape machines worked. How you could just push the reels back-and-forth seems like a magic trick for someone raised on Sony Umatic, Betacam and Type-C machines. It would seem that nobody else engineered things quite like Ampex did.


  Sorry for the diversion, now back to your regular programming.


  Scott Thomas


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