Wow, how many times I slid back the lid on one of those for routine cleaning! It's time to clean the capstan and replace the pinch roller on yours -- gnarly slippage flutter going on there! :-) The Deltas were my favorite. ITC machines were absolutely solid and one of the brands that advanced the cart tape technology to sufficient quality for stations to use them for music playback as well as spots and jingles. That spanned the time between vinyl (no more "cue burn!") and CDs. Most stations had between 3 and 6 cart decks in the control room so the DJ had a busy time swapping carts to run through all the commercials and the jingle at the end of a spot break. One of my stations had three of the triple-deck Delta III units, so that was pretty glorious to have 9 cart slots! The "primary" tone on the cue track is what caused the tape to stop cued up to the beginning ready for the next play. Whoever recorded the cart would press the "secondary" tone button on the recorder at the end of the element and hold it for a moment until all the audio had faded out. That cue tone (some stations used the "tertiary" tone) could be used to automatically trigger the next cart to fire. Then the trailing edge of the secondary tone would cause the deck to go into fast forward mode. The flashing light was a big help to let the DJ know which carts had played. The Deltas also had an option to lock out the play function so you couldn't accidently fire the spot a second time.
The reason the deck does not release the cart at cue point may be because the chain that makes the pinch roller mechanism pop up and down may be too tight. You might want to add one more slack link on chain. Back in the early 1980’s, I was a DJ on my college radio station. We had these cart decks (if I remember correctly we got a new three cart unit my last quarter on the air back in 1984). We used them to play station ID’s at the top of the hour, public service announcements, station promotions, and transitions between songs. In order to get a passing grade, all DJ’s had to produce three PSAs or promos per quarter which entailed utilizing the station’s production studio to record our spots on reel to reel tape, mixing and then recording final product onto a cart. The station reused the carts, and depending on the length of the cart tape, we could sometimes put multiple copies of the produced recording on a single tape so the tape did not require fast forwarding to beginning of tape. I remember recording my spots onto carts and laying down the cue tone immediately before hitting record. The station personnel who reviewed our carts was a real stickler, and I remember he made me remake a couple of my first products. It was actually a good thing since the spots sounded more refined and professional. I think that person left the station just before the last quarter I was on the air. I remember many of the spots sounded sloppy and somewhat amateurish since the person who took over didn’t seem to care as much. I remember someone had made a jingle utilizing the intro to Safety Dance very similar to the one you had. Our station was KCPR 91.3FM at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo CA. Those were fun days!
Ohhhh... the old flutter pattern of ITC's old decommisioned cart decks. Recording a 10'' item on a 40'' or 70'' cart, once. Tape degradation and tape wear increased, waiting time increased dumping one of the main advantages of the system. Nasty cart management :-D ( Nice video! ;-) )
I have at least 15 ITC Delta, and Series 99B cart machines in my basement studio. Likely thousand or more carts. The Audiopak AA4 pressure pads are failing, but I got Fidelipaks that are still super. Thanks for your demo! I ought to post my machines in my SMC DP-2 automation system.
There's an old neuron left over from the 80s in my head: "Keep tapes and floppy disks away from speakers!" X^D Maybe not so much with small mac speakers, but certainly larger speakers can have magnets strong enough to, over long exposure time, weaken tape recordings. Kinda like a slow/weak bulk eraser they can make the recordings 'fade'. Also close proximity to modern devices like phones/macbooks/ipads sometimes have strong neodymium magnets. Pretty sure I zapped the mag stripe on my credit card a few times by putting my wallet too close to mag sources.
Also, I got scads of jingles, including the origional stereo Jefferson Mall mall package....One of Louisville's last built malls, which is still hanging on.
1:49 The jingles we can hear there were produced by Ronald Gerber, who worked at WRUR in the late 80s and the mid-90s. He now has his own weekly radio show at KFAI Minneapolis, titled "Crap From The Past". He talked about your video and these jingles in one of his latest shows that you can listen to here: archive.org/details/cftp-2021-05-07 - around 62 minutes, he talks about this video and explains the background of the jingles.
Wow, how many times I slid back the lid on one of those for routine cleaning! It's time to clean the capstan and replace the pinch roller on yours -- gnarly slippage flutter going on there! :-) The Deltas were my favorite. ITC machines were absolutely solid and one of the brands that advanced the cart tape technology to sufficient quality for stations to use them for music playback as well as spots and jingles. That spanned the time between vinyl (no more "cue burn!") and CDs. Most stations had between 3 and 6 cart decks in the control room so the DJ had a busy time swapping carts to run through all the commercials and the jingle at the end of a spot break. One of my stations had three of the triple-deck Delta III units, so that was pretty glorious to have 9 cart slots! The "primary" tone on the cue track is what caused the tape to stop cued up to the beginning ready for the next play. Whoever recorded the cart would press the "secondary" tone button on the recorder at the end of the element and hold it for a moment until all the audio had faded out. That cue tone (some stations used the "tertiary" tone) could be used to automatically trigger the next cart to fire. Then the trailing edge of the secondary tone would cause the deck to go into fast forward mode. The flashing light was a big help to let the DJ know which carts had played. The Deltas also had an option to lock out the play function so you couldn't accidently fire the spot a second time.
The reason the deck does not release the cart at cue point may be because the chain that makes the pinch roller mechanism pop up and down may be too tight. You might want to add one more slack link on chain.
Back in the early 1980’s, I was a DJ on my college radio station. We had these cart decks (if I remember correctly we got a new three cart unit my last quarter on the air back in 1984). We used them to play station ID’s at the top of the hour, public service announcements, station promotions, and transitions between songs. In order to get a passing grade, all DJ’s had to produce three PSAs or promos per quarter which entailed utilizing the station’s production studio to record our spots on reel to reel tape, mixing and then recording final product onto a cart. The station reused the carts, and depending on the length of the cart tape, we could sometimes put multiple copies of the produced recording on a single tape so the tape did not require fast forwarding to beginning of tape. I remember recording my spots onto carts and laying down the cue tone immediately before hitting record. The station personnel who reviewed our carts was a real stickler, and I remember he made me remake a couple of my first products. It was actually a good thing since the spots sounded more refined and professional. I think that person left the station just before the last quarter I was on the air. I remember many of the spots sounded sloppy and somewhat amateurish since the person who took over didn’t seem to care as much.
I remember someone had made a jingle utilizing the intro to Safety Dance very similar to the one you had. Our station was KCPR 91.3FM at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo CA. Those were fun days!
Ohhhh... the old flutter pattern of ITC's old decommisioned cart decks. Recording a 10'' item on a 40'' or 70'' cart, once. Tape degradation and tape wear increased, waiting time increased dumping one of the main advantages of the system. Nasty cart management :-D ( Nice video! ;-) )
I have at least 15 ITC Delta, and Series 99B cart machines in my basement studio. Likely thousand or more carts. The Audiopak AA4 pressure pads are failing, but I got Fidelipaks that are still super. Thanks for your demo! I ought to post my machines in my SMC DP-2 automation system.
There's an old neuron left over from the 80s in my head: "Keep tapes and floppy disks away from speakers!" X^D
Maybe not so much with small mac speakers, but certainly larger speakers can have magnets strong enough to, over long exposure time, weaken tape recordings. Kinda like a slow/weak bulk eraser they can make the recordings 'fade'. Also close proximity to modern devices like phones/macbooks/ipads sometimes have strong neodymium magnets. Pretty sure I zapped the mag stripe on my credit card a few times by putting my wallet too close to mag sources.
Also, I got scads of jingles, including the origional stereo Jefferson Mall mall package....One of Louisville's last built malls, which is still hanging on.
When the Cart rules the mind, the Eastview jingle will drive you blind... :-D
1:49 The jingles we can hear there were produced by Ronald Gerber, who worked at WRUR in the late 80s and the mid-90s.
He now has his own weekly radio show at KFAI Minneapolis, titled "Crap From The Past".
He talked about your video and these jingles in one of his latest shows that you can listen to here: archive.org/details/cftp-2021-05-07 - around 62 minutes, he talks about this video and explains the background of the jingles.
WABC 77 NYC Musicradio
Does anyone here know of a good repair shop for these cart machine on the web? Thanks.