Any Radio vets remember these Shaffer machines?

I did a google search about radio dealing with cue burn and ran into this thread:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...s-do-when-vinyl-records-got-scratched.218808/

There were so many ex radio guys with entertaining stories that experienced this I wanted to pose a question.

I never worked permanently in a radio station, and I never stepped foot into one before 2000. Im always fascinated with the old equipment. I saw this video of Don Schuster describing the automated tape machine, then saw the video of the Shaffer Automation System. I just now found out that automation existed in 1970. I know Shaffer wasnt the only company to make them, but nonetheless...

http://youtu.be/biG8jY3CDMg?t=1m5s


I read something online about how "fun" things got when these systems went out of sync or one of the tapes broke. Anyone have any stories of this? I cant find anything online about it, but it has to be fascinating.

 

Oh, yeah -- I ran one of those when I was 17 at WPKM, Tampa -- basically baby-sitting the station, loading the tapes up, and trying to stay awake. The ones that were really bad were the Carousel Cart machines, where the whole thing would spin and then play one cartridge at a time:



God help you when a cart got snarled in one of these contraptions.

 

Yes, remember not only Schafer but also IGM, Harris, and others. Carousels and AudioPiles (aka Peter, Peter, Cart Eater). Also have memories of operating and maintaining them. And also, dealing with them when they malfunctioned.

 

When I worked at WTGI-FM we had a 1967 Autogram, Serial #1. My bosses bought it at a trade show. Two Cart Carousels, three Revox B77s, even a device with the largest cart I've ever seen that would announce the time. Had a steel turntable with little pins that would rotate and activate the various inputs on schedule and another rectangular pin matrix that told the carousels what cart to play. One single-cart machine for the legal ID and another that played instrumental music to lead up to the network news.
I did the routine maintenance such as cleaning the tape heads and keeping the time set. It worked really well, I can't remember having any trouble. It even survived a lightning hit that killed much of the rest of the station. About the only time there would be any trouble was if an operator went to sleep and let all the music tapes run out.
It was probably junked 25-30 years ago. 6' high and 10' across and can all be replaced with a desktop computer today. Ah, the olden days.

 

Those pics look very much like the automation from WHBF-FM (Rock Island, Il.) where I worked from 1982-1984. If you worked Sunday nights and/or weekends, you more or less had to babysit the system while djing over on the AM side but usually once you came in and set up the reels, it was pretty much good to go for the remainder of your shift. The main information was entered into a computer system by someone else on day shift. I don't remember the whole thing being a real hassel, but if someone forgot the trip-tone at the end of one of the commercial carts, it could could get ugly.

The system was abandoned in 1987 with a change in station ownership and the FM station going totally live. New format and all.

 

I remember getting a tour of KTSM in El Paso when I was a kid, probably around '81 or so. They had FM, AM and TV in the same building then. The AM format was news and talk, while FM programming was the traditional easy-listening format (better known as elevator music). They had a system very similar to that in the video, with decks of reel recorders in racks playing the programming. Over the air you could sometimes hear a signal, like a low rumble IIRC. I have an aircheck from the station I recorded on Xmas day in 1981, playing holiday music of course, and that tone or rumble is audible between breaks.

dan c

 

Dan C,

The low rumble was the 30 Hertz cue tone. People with better equipment could hear the cue tones. And some of the tunes with synthesizer tones which mimicked cue tones could bring one of these systems to it's knees in a hurry and crash it.

 

At one station I worked for, one song, "Higher And Higher" by Rita Coolidge (of all people)
would stop and cue the next event at the beginning of the song when the snare and kick drum first hit after the bass line.

Every single time.

The music was on ten inch reels from some programing service. Peters Productions , maybe ?

 

Peters Productions did a lot of those reels. Their AC format back then was quite good.

 

What did happen when these things malfunctioned? Im sure if a cart got stuck in the carousel, did the machines automatically bypass it, or did it just stop until the carousel played outA?

You guys got the greatest stories.

I guess there was dead air until the baby sitter rewound or set up the next reel? Did these machines cue the tapes automatically at some point?

If they had these automation machines since '67 and recorded all the vinyl to reels, why did they bother with turntables in studio at all?

 

Most systems didn't bypass a non functioning or ready source until BE's system was released. Reel tapes weren't automatically cued. Turntables were kept available in case the automation had a failure (which could mean waiting for spare parts from the vendor). If a SMC or IGM cart carousel or Audiofile jammed or a tape transport failed, to bypass or substitute one involved reprogramming the whole automation (which was major engineering work). Sometimes, static electricity could make life difficult with an automation system (the IGM Carousel which barfed out carts on the floor. The Audiofile which jammed and chopped off the heads of carts if it got out of alignment or vibrated loose from the rack. Add to that the Scully 270 tape playback units which took 14" reels. Those machines demanded care and attention. Fail to lock down the hubs in high speed rewind could get a person seriously injured when the reels flew off the machine at very high speeds. I have lots of memories of operating and maintaining hand me down old systems and going to the Harris Stereo 90.

 

Another thing to note, until later on, tape based automation systems didn't handle fast paced formats. Usually until around 1973-1974 and Drake-Chenault, Peters Productions and other similar companies, most tape automated formats were beautiful music and easy listening type. As those didn't require fast segues and could be handled by the available technology. Drake-Chenault discovered how to back roll cue tones to make Top 40 and AC formats work for automation then and moved the industry forward. Remember, in many areas of the country FM was the poor stepchild until around 1973-1975 and many stations made low profits compared to their AM sisters if they had one. Often the SCA (Subsidiary Communications Authorization) or Subcarriers made a hefty amount of the money needed to keep an FM station on the air. SCA got used often for commercial free background music for stores and offices and business. And also some other uses.

 

Thats great stuff McLover thank you, I put Drake-Chenault in google and got this:

http://www.drakechenault.org/textpg.html

 

BBC world service used to run multiple VOA networks in Europe
These were automated, the operator reloaded up to 8 tape transports with 10.5" NAB reels,lots of Willis Connover Jazz tapes ,rare in the UK in the 60s
The machines were switched by Strowger Exchange Uniselectors
On occasion the uniselectors could get out of step and the right tape was sent to the wrong network, a nightmare to remedy.
The jazz was great though, ilegal copies were made from the 15IPS masters.....I have some somewhere.

 

From what Im reading on that site, there were 600 songs in the typical music rotation, with 30-40 reels for a library. So whoever manned the reels was busy changing them out all day. Damn. Great read.

Rolo, thats cool, I cant even imagine what the nitemare could be to remedy the system going out of sync.

 

Yes, the libraries were good sized. And rotated out regularly with fresh tapes every month.

 

Usually the SCA chain consisted of a low speed open reel machine and a BIG reel of tape when muzak was the SCA, but some commercial stations would sell their SCA to a nonprofit or religious organization and that meant that there was some pretty entertaining stuff on SCA in some markets if you knew where to look. In St. Louis they had, as far back as the late seventies or early eighties, a books-for-the-blind which had an exemption from the normal rules on obscenity and so forth. They would have an "adult hour" once or twice a week where they had this old lady who would read verbatim from stuff like Penthouse Forum and of course she sounded shocked, shocked that such words could be written...but she was a trouper and read away.

The local surplus places in STL (Gateway Electronics and the other one) did a land office business in SCA converter kits. Then most of the SCA went to low rate data broadcast and the blind reader went to internet.

 

The D- C duplicating service for the automated machines was a hell of a business. From what I read, there were some very detailed processes to make sure the duplicated reels wouldnt cause syncing problems with the machines.

 

With the Autogram the stop tones were 25 hz and recorded on only the left audio track. When the tone started it initiated the next event and when it ended the tape stopped (and was cued up). With a little thought and planning one could create some nice short cross-fades between events and this would make the program sound smoother. And with a little careful editing you could make things run nice and tight.
We made our own program tapes and when I became the Music Director and began printing the newest tapes I noticed that the bass sounded a little funny. Investigation revealed a high-pass filter on the left channel but not on the right, introducing a nasty phase issue. Of course that filter was then taken out by me (without the Chief Engineer's consent). Afterwards it was found that if the songs were recorded at the proper level and one didn't do something dumb such as bump the turntable or play a warped record everything worked just fine almost all of the time. Every now and then a song would have a problem and I'd cut it out and splice in a new dub with the level a db or two lower. If it failed the second time we just didn't play that song or found a different copy of it. I don't recall having a lot of problems at all, it was a workable system and with a bit of extra care sounded pretty slick.

 

Thats another thing I cannot fathom because its before my time. The amount of splicing that had to be done to correct things in the music. Like these guys at D-C were splicing pops and clicks out of music. Youd think at the duplicating house theyd just buy a new record, but I guess it didnt take as much time to splice out a pop rather than going to the store for a new disc.

 

Once you get skilled at it editing is no big deal. It only takes a few seconds and almost always comes out fine. You learn intuitively what you can edit and what you can't. I have probably done it close to 10,000 times, and this experience was valuable to me when we entered the digital age and started doing audio on computers.
I really enjoy doing studio and production work and wish that I could make a living at it. But there is nothing happening within reasonable driving distance of here that I'm aware of.

 

Oh my God.....Drake Chenault....I haven't heard that name since the late seventies when I worked in York Pa. I remember doing live assist (God what horrors!!!) at a small station in Shamokin Pa. Thank goodness for Audio Vault. By the way, if anyone on the board has an on air job in the Baltimore area.....I'm available.

 

The radio industry has been trying to replace live Air Talent since the 70's and with the God awful voice tracking they finally have succeeded.

 

Much easier to get voice talent when computer automation and mp3's leave loads of money to pay them I suppose.

 

Radio as a rule does not like to use MP3, reasons are because it will not withstand multiple D/A conversions in a modern broadcast plant. They prefer .bwf files or .wav files.