<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.3354" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY style="MARGIN: 4px 4px 1px; FONT: 12pt Tahoma; COLOR: #000000; WORD-WRAP: break-word; webkit-nbsp-mode: space; webkit-line-break: after-white-space">
<DIV>Wow, another RCA guy! My quad career ran from 1985-1998, with TR-600's. Our office now contracts the duplication out, but I still have eight TR-600's in varying states of repair, numerous headwheel panels and reasonably complete documentation. I loved the ability to go from high to low-band playback by flipping two switches.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Anyone still using TR-600's?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Steve Greene<BR>Archivist<BR>Nixon Presidential Library and Museum<BR>(301) 837-1772<BR><BR>>>> jpo@prestodigital.ca 8/6/2008 12:22:30 PM >>><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="COLOR: #000000">I feel like a total junior here... didn't spend much time with engineering Quads, but I do have a special fondness for them as an operator.
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3> My history with Quad tape spanned 1976-1985. I worked in two facilities; an on-air station in Saskatoon, Sask (Canada), and a high-end post house in Toronto. The on-air station was an RCA house, but converted to AMPEX when Type-C took over with VPR-2s. Then they went SONY. The Toronto house was AMPEX all the way.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3>I worked first as an engineer, then as an operator/editor at the TV station, which had five machines in its tape room and two in a truck for location taping. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3> The machines (as I recall) consisted of: one TR-70C, used for mastering and editing "Hi-Band" commercial programming (no timecode)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3> two TR-60s, used for on-air program and commercial playback ('short' run) and donor source video for production</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3> one TR-4(5?) Lo-band recorder for programming tape delay, and</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3> one TR-3 (?) Lo-band recorder, also for tape delay.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3>The VTRs in the truck were also TR-3's if I've got that right -- they were the horizontal flat-bed type recorders.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3>We avoided Lo-band where we could, but because half the machines in the mix were Lo-band only, scheduling was critical. Lots of midnight and very early AM shifts doing the commercial runs for the day -- this was before the availability of a cart machine for this market. Eventually they installed a Betacart-- circa 1986.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3>It was during this time that VT playback traffic went from somewhere around 70-80 plays a day to north of 250, so the department was under enormous pressure, handling commercial on-air, program delay, production, news, etc., all with ONE operator and a supervisor -- who was mostly concerned with file management and traffic rather than actual operation.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3>I worked as an on-line editor / vision-mixer at the post facility in Toronto (VTR on Scollard) where five Super-HiBand AVR-3's were in service; three directly controlled by an RA-(4000?) editor (with a Vital Squeezoom!) for A/B Roll editing, and two more for duplication, wild recordings, studio recording, etc. Several 7.5 ips recording heads were acquired for feature-length capability when the facility became a film-transfer point for the new home-video market. The important thing was to re-adjust the erase-delay before use!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3> There was originally one VPR-2 (which got "Merlin'ed), and later 3 VPR-3's showed up (late 1984?) with an ACE and two ADO's. And I suspect those same three VPR-3's continued their careers in Edmonton when the Toronto company demised a couple of years later.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica" face=Helvetica size=3>Its been 23 years, but if there's any little practical hands-on thing that might help.... We needed to do a lot of on-the-spot things, not many of them orthodox, to keep them "on-the-air"! I believe they all had personalities, like dogs or Douglas Adams' "Marvin", in the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica; TEXT-TRANSFORM: none; COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); TEXT-INDENT: 0px; WHITE-SPACE: normal; LETTER-SPACING: normal; BORDER-COLLAPSE: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; apple-text-size-adjust: auto; orphans: 2; widows: 2">
<DIV>Joe Owens</DIV>
<DIV>Presto!Digital Colourgrade</DIV>
<DIV>302-9664 106 Avenue</DIV>
<DIV>Edmonton, Alberta T5H0N4</DIV>
<DIV>+1 780 421-9980</DIV>
<DIV><A href="mailto:jpo@prestodigital.ca">jpo@prestodigital.ca</A></DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV><BR class=Apple-interchange-newline></SPAN></DIV><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>