Swiss-Cheese memories

Last week’s blog about the smell of radio drew a lot of comments and solved a couple of big mysteries that has been nibbling on the ankles of my mind for years.

One of the mysteries: which is which? Altec 25B and Western Electric 250B side by side. Before getting on to the mysteries, there was one memory that I had written about before but did not include in last week’s blog because it would have made the story longer than I like.

John, one of my DJ/Broadcast Technician buddies was also a former DJ at WCOS. He reminded me of the story of the day the wall color of the walls in the master control room changed without the benefit of paint. This control room sat on the second floor just above the marquee of the Cornell Arms Apartments. There was little air flow in that studio because up until then the only window in that room was blocked off and covered with a cork bulletin board. As I mentioned before, many of my fellow DJs smoked like chimneys and I I began my shift by removing the perpetually filled glass ash tray from the edge of the console desk. My memory is a little hazy but John and I may have been the only DJ that didn’t smoke. I think this story changed that.

In 1968, Milton became our new Chief Engineer, that is what Broadcast Technicians were called back then. He also did not smoke. He didn’t enjoy walking into all that second hand smoke any more than I liked doing a show in a smoky environment. So he took matters in hand. To improve air flow in the studio, he removed that cork bulletin board and exposed the casement window that was behind it. On cooler days and most nights, we could open that window and let fresh air into the studio during our shows. We had to be careful with our monitor levels when the window was open because the rest of the building was apartments generally occupied by folks that were getting a little grey in their hair. So it was not cool to be rocking In A Gadda Va Vida at 2 am when the little old lady in the apartment above was trying to get her beauty rest.

The walls of that control room were an olive green. The walls of the other rooms in the wing were varying shades of tan with the production studio next to the master control room being the darkest. When the bulletin board came down, Milton realized that the wall that was behind the edge of the bulletin board was tan, not olive colored! Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the olive color was not from a more recent paint job that was done without removing the bulletin board, the Western Electric Clock or the cart cases that were attached to the wall, but rather something that was water soluble that had been applied to the wall.

So, one night while I was doing my remote show out at Doug Broome’s, Milton patched the master control operation over to the production studio next door, covered all the equipment with canvas tarps and washed the walls. All of that olive colored goo came off and the true color of the walls was revealed to be the same shade of tan that was in the FM studio and the room that contained the cubby holes that were assigned to each DJ for storing his or her headphones and other items. When I arrived back from the remote he showed me the bucket that contained the soapy water he had used. It now was olive green and the smell immediately told me what it was; smoke residue and nicotine. He carried the bucket out of the studio and said that he was going to the dumpster. I never saw those rags that he used again. He may have used the bucket to clean the walls of the production room which had taken over as the room with the darkest walls in the studio wing. Soon it was the same tan color as the rest of the control rooms. Everything smelled better too!!

Now onto the mysteries created by last week’s blog that have been solved.

Mystery number 1: Was the board in WCOS master control manufactured by Western Electric or Altec? The 25B mixing console was initially manufactured by the Western Electric Corporation who primarily supplied equipment to the Bell Telephone System. If an audio console can be a work of art, the Western Electric 25B was certainly one of the “coolest” consoles ever made. It featured sleek lines and was built solidly harkening back to an era when radio equipment was built like a tank. In the 1950s, Western Electric was forced to divest of its broadcast products in an antitrust settlement, and Altec Lansing acquired all of its audio products. Altec began manufacturing their version of the 25B. The two consoles were remarkably similar but the Altec was not quite as well built. I had always thought that the console at WCOS was built Western Electric but one of my readers had been told by someone else that the board at WCOS was actually an Altec.

Oh Lordy, there goes my Swiss-Cheese memory again. Over my career, I had used boards built by both manufacturers. So was the one at WCOS the Altec or the Western Electric. I began a search through my old pictures of WCOS and alas, none of the master control room included a logo on the face of that board. Looking at pictures of the two types of board on the internet I noticed that the Western Electric boards tended to have fan shaped VU meters mounted beneath the surface while the Altecs tended to have square meters mounted on top of the surface, many of the meters had the Altec logo on the face underneath the needle. But I couldn’t be sure if there were any variations of the Altec board that had the Western Electric type meter. A few days ago, I had a phone conversation with my friend who was the “chief engineer” at WCOS who cleaned the walls. He confirmed my initial memory that the board at WCOS was indeed one manufactured by Western Electric. I am grateful to Bob for raising the question and driving me to get an answer for something that has been bugging me for some time.

The second mystery that came from discussions of last week’s blog was WUSC-AM located on the second or third floor of the Russell House Student Union Building. My memory was that it was on the third floor but another WUSC alumni was pretty sure that it was on the second. My buddy Milton, who was the “chief engineer” of both WUSC and WCOS again came to the rescue. The answer was “Yes!” WUSC was located on the second floor of the Russell House in the 1960s but the floors were numbered “Ground”, “One” and “Two!” So I would walk up the ramp to the “First” floor, and then up the stairwell to the “Second” floor to get to the station. I was told by a long time denizen of the Russell House that when the West Wing where the station was located was extended into what was then called “Davis Field” a basement was added under the old student post office that made the “Ground Floor” designation a little inconsistent. Especially since there was now another elevator added to the East Wing that ran from the basement to the third floor. So the floors were renumbered and the floor where WUSC was became the third floor. Now if you are using elevators the floor number is the same between the two elevators but you have to be careful which one you use. The elevator that I remember runs from the first to the fourth floor. The new elevator near the loading docks runs from the basement where the student post office is now to the third floor where WUSC-FM is located.

That is almost more than my poor brain can tolerate. But I take comfort in occasionally having to help those students and guests who get on the old elevator and exclaim “Where is the button for the basement?!?” The look of disbelief on their faces when I explain the arrangement is priceless.

So, tomorrow, I’ll park in the Bull Street Garage and make my way through the sea of students in mid class change up the hill to the Russell House lobby on the first floor. I’ll punch the third floor button on the elevator and ride the same elevator up to WUSCFM that I sparsely used back in the day 56 years ago to get to WUSC-AM. At least the elevator car has been remodeled so the look is all shiny and new, but it is fun to watch the eyes of my fellow passengers widen and dart around as I tell them on our way up that I’ve been riding this very same elevator for over 55 years. Oh MY!