"Iain Churches" wrote in message
i.fi...

The tape machines were Philips Pro 50s

I liked those. We had several in mixdown and copying
facilities.


Ampex AG440s, both using Scotch 206.

Did you likethe AG440? Compared with Studer they
were pretty flaky IMO. When I moved to RCA we
had an Ampex multitrack. On a big (expensive) session,
we used to insist that a maintenance engineer with hot
soldering iron and a box of spare cards, sat besides the
machine for the whole session.

Happy days....

Indeed. Flying by the seat of one's pants!
It was fun!.

I also preferred the Philips to the Ampex machines. I don't think there was
much difference in performance, but the Philips were nicer to work on. A few
years later I went to work for Ampex, at the time that the ATR100 came out.
That was pretty impressive as a transport, excellent tape handling. I also
recall a couple of years before the ATR100, at Rediffusion we bought a
transport mechanism from an American company that was capstan-free.
Microconic, Miniconic, Microsonic or something like that. We wanted to make
it into a test-tape manufacturing deck, so it had to be very good. Very
impressive machine, but I don't think anything ever came of it.

S.
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