I was reading my Facebook news feed earlier this week when a picture of an Ampex 601 tape recorder popped up and triggered a whole bunch of memories. This vacuum tube machine was a wonder, it was rather large for a recorder, it was heavy and it was bound in a vinyl case that looked and felt like leather. And it was one of the first broadcast quality audio tape machines that I ever used.
In fact, there were two of them in the master control room at WUSC-AM when I did my first show there back in 1963. We had a couple more of them in the production studio and one more in the news booth. They were paired with big clunky Ampex 351s one in production and one in a rack in the back of the Master Control Room.
My first radio show was called “The Night Owl Show.” Why; first, because all radio shows back in those days had names and second, the show ran from 11 PM until 1 AM followed by the station signoff. That is how we got our on the job training then, recording the late evening show. On Friday afternoons, after my last class and a bite to eat in the Russell House Cafeteria, I’d take the elevator to the third floor. There I would pull a few albums from the massive record library. Once in the studio I would load the show tape and set it up for recording on the Ampex 351 behind me. I would then load up my Coca Cola commercial reel on the left had Ampex 601 and queue up my first two songs on the turntables. At 15 seconds before 1 PM, I started the recording on the Ampex 351. As the second hand swung closer to the top of the hour, I’d put my middle finger down on the edge of the record and start the turntable.
When the clock struck the hour, I turned up the volume control, called potentiometers, on the board for the turntable and released the record. And we were off and running. I always started recording my show on the top of the hour so I knew what time it was when it would be played back. That way, I could give an accurate time check several times during the show.
I still do that now when recording a show. But since my shows today play in multiple time zones around the world, I give the time as “20 minutes until the hour” or “13 minutes on the down side of the hour” and let the listener fill in the appropriate hour wherever and whenever they are. By the way just like my very first shows; my pre recorded show are “live to tape.” No editing, no voice tracking. You get to hear what happened, warts and all. There is so much energy in live shows that is missing in shows that are edited or assembled by an automation computer. I was fortunate in my career, that when I was forced to use an automation system, it was in “DJ Assist” mode.
But I digress; back to those Ampex 601 Tape machines. We would cue up the tapes on the machines by threading the tapes through the head assembly and onto the take up reels. Then we would start the tape and listen for the beginning of the commercial over the cueing system. We then stopped the tape when we heard the first sound and, using our hands on the reels, manually backed the tape up to the very beginning. A couple of manual “zip zips” back and forth to place the tape exactly in the right place and then we were ready. Although we had remote controls that could start the capstan motors on the tape machines, we rarely used them because it took several seconds for those motors to come up to the 7 ½ inches per second running speed. Instead we left the capstans running and used the lever switch to engage the capstan roller with the capstan and get an “instant start” at the beginning of the commercial. Because we had to reach the switches on either machine, they had to be placed as close to the DJ as possible. Ours were at either end of the audio console between the board and the turntables on each side.
As you can probably guess; with all the slip cueing going on with the records and the loading and cueing of the commercial tapes, not to mention the keeping of the logs, transmitter readings and answering the request line, with the average song lasting between 2 ½ and 3 ½ minutes, we didn’t have much time to sit back and relax.
It got a little better when I started at WCOS, we had a Gates 101 and three cart machines but our production elements such and jingles and the “Swap and Shop” segments with Dottie Lloyd were still on reel to reel tape. It wasn’t until I was at WIS Radio that I was able to use instant start turntables, cart machines, instant start reel to reel tape machines and an automation system operating in DJ Assist mode. Unfortunately, my time there was as “Chief Engineer” and what air time I had there was filling in when the announcer on the schedule was out sick or otherwise could not do his or her shift. The songs in the 70s were longer, although we still had transmitter readings to log it was nice to sit back in the air chair and enjoy at least part of the tunes.
These days, all my songs and show production elements are on a laptop that I connect with the station’s audio board. There are turntables and CDs in the control room but it is much easier to use the computer files instead. There are complications with all this being on one source but I’ve figured out work-a-rounds that allow me to do the old school 50’s and 60’s radio experience. But no, I still don’t have more time. I have to log every song into the RDS system that feeds the artists and song titles to the displays on your FM radios. So it pretty much feels the same to me, just different tasks. I have but one regret; I didn’t learn to type in high school. Oh MY!
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