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<DIV>Hi Bill:<BR><BR>As always, thanks for the excellent first-hand
info. The great work on the 7800 obviously led to the 7900 series. I
still have a couple of VPR-7900's, and they perform beautifully. Several
listmembers have seen them, and I think they wiould tell you that with the very
high band carrier and a TBC-7, they look like Type-C. They are also
5-motor transports, but there is no slo-mo function. Instead, the 5th
motor drives the capstan during wind modes. All-in-all, a
pretty smooth transport, and an amazing 1" machine for its time!
Those were interesting times in the industry.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Don Norwood<BR>Digitrak Communications, Inc.<BR><A
href="http://www.digitrakcom.com">www.digitrakcom.com</A></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=wcarpen107@yahoo.com href="mailto:wcarpen107@yahoo.com">Bill
Carpenter</A> </DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN>Hi Chris and everyone!</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><BR><SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>Yes, the VR-7000 type products could have been much better with
torque motors. <BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>When I started with Ampex in Nov of 1965, I had six years of design
experience with Govt. magnetic recorders and before that I had three years of
running my own wedding recording business, "Tru-Sound Recording" using an
early three motor audio recorder, made by TDC, which had very low W&F and
fast winding. </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>The VR-7800 was the first machine that I worked on from the start
w/ Barry Guislinger as project engineer and I designed all the controls,
mechanical interfaces and the i/o areas. <BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>When we went into production in 1968 (Barry had moved back to Ca,
to work on the AVR-1) I moved up to project engineer. <BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>The 7800 had five DC motors, scanner, capstan, supply & takeup,
and slo-motion (this was a small Globe motor w/ a teflon felt drag system for
stable low speeds). <BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>This was the first capstan servoed machine, the first use of
Yaskwah printed circuit motors, and the first tension servoed machine and the
first editing machine.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>Another interesting point was that the "Assemble" mode was fully
servo locked, unlike all previous Quad's.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>IVC had great tape handling, but in a head to head shootout, the
IVC-960 vs. VR-7800 for the EBU (European Broadcast Union) in Paris in 1969,
we won hands down on the signal handling quality in both PAL and
SECAM.<BR><BR>I had spent 2 weeks in the summer of 1968 in Paris, at the ORTF
labs, since they bought about 15, VR-7800's, and I went to tweak the tension
servo's since the factory setup caused some problems in Secam. <BR>It worked
well and that caused the shootout, the next year.<BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Bye for now, Bill & Gewyn & Ginger (whoof...whoof)<BR></DIV>
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