[Tig] More memories please

[Maurice Schechter]

Hi Ed,

I have one in my collection working , with the battery chargers, 
heterodyne color playback adapter and all the manuals.. Brought it many 
years ago at an auction. Working on it over the years gave me the 
experience , when duart set up a video tape restoration division this 
summer, I was the one to buy a quad and restore it, which was a mint RCA 
TR600A .

The size of a 2" that small designed in the 60's is very impressive 
engineering. It sure does sound loud against the RCA. The VR3000 has 
ball bearings , not air. Was told that their life was short.

maurice schechter

Ed Reitan wrote:

> Thanks to Greg Fisher for supporting the TIG.
>  ====
> 
> Thanks Bob,
> 
> Does anyone know of a surviving Ampex VR3000  "suitcase" quad
> recorder?  One should be preserved in a collection- maybe in the
> UCLA Film and Television Archives "Collection of Television
> Technology and Design".
> 
> It was quite a example of excellent packaging.
> 
> Ed Reitan
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Bob Kertesz" <bob at bluescreen.com>
> To: <tig at ns1.colorist.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 10:14 AM
> Subject: Re: [Tig] More memories please
> 
> 
> Thanks to Greg Fisher for supporting the TIG.
>  ====
> 
> 
>>The remotes we did sometimes used the Ampex portable 2"
> 
> recorder, a
> 
>>wonder in miniaturization for it's time. I shuddered when a
> 
> bicycle
> 
>>messenger returned our only machine to the 57th street studios
> 
> having
> 
>>banged around Manhattan with it.
> 
> 
> That was the Ampex VR3000, a "suitcase" style quad recorder. I
> traveled around
> the world for Editel with two of those and the Editel MKIII
> handheld camera
> for a couple of years in the early '70's. The deck weighed about
> 80 lbs, and
> the only reasonable way to carry them was to have two of them so
> you didn't
> lean over too far in one direction and both your arms stretched
> equally.
> 
> It took 20 minute loads of small reel 2" tape, had one audio
> channel, and no
> timecode channel. The vacuum for the guide and air for the air
> bearing head
> (14,400 rpm, remember?) came from what was essentially a small
> aquarium pump
> inside the unit.
> 
> The Editel MKIII handheld was based on the Ampex BC230 studio
> camera. We
> bought those and pulled the boards and optical blocks/preamps out
> of the
> heads, and built our own handheld heads with just yokes and
> preamps, going to
> a backpack we also built containing the rest of the head
> electronics through a
> 10 foot piece of cable the size of my wrist. Then back to the CCU
> through much
> smaller multicore able to go several hundred feet. The CCU's had
> RGB out, and
> needed an external encoder and an external enhancer to make
> proper images.
> 
> The whole road show was in 11 cases for a one camera one vtr
> setup.
> 
> Here is a picture of me in 1972 getting it ready to go on the
> road, taken in
> the alley behind 729 N. Highland, home of Editel L.A. The picture
> shows half
> the cases for a complete one camera one vtr package
> 
> http://www.bluescreen.com/pix/BK-72.JPG
> 
> --Bob
> 
> Bob Kertesz
> BlueScreen LLC
> Hollywood, California
> bob at bluescreen.com
> 
> The Ultimate in ULTIMATTE® compositing.
> For details, visit http://www.bluescreen.com
> 
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> 
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-- 
Maurice Schechter
Chief Engineer
Duart Film & Video
245 w 55th st
NY, NY 10019
212-757-4580x628