Does anyone know anything about this really cool old reel-to-reel?

[Dean De Furia]

I stumbled apon this listing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3005728928&category=15000

[Ben]

Originally posted by Dean De Furia
I stumbled apon this listing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3005728928&category=15000

Wow!


Neat!

[sgraham]

It was one of the earliest portable recorders. Our station has one in the attic, in not nearly such nice condition - I've never tried to make it go. The drive and tape path is unusual, but it would use the same type of tape other machines used, not necessarily the paper tape mentioned in the listing, which was very cheap and nasty stuff.

[indy mike]

I'd bet my pal Art Shifrin knows about that beast - go to the home page, find the link to Art's site & shoot him an email about it...

[Steve Hoffman]

Indeed he does. Art sez:


>
> This was the first "tape recorder" to be designed, manufactured and sold
in
> the US. It was introduced in 1946 and drastically inferior to the AC
biased
> Magnetophones made in Germany until bombings and material shortages caused
> AEG to cease making them. Begun had worked on early 'magnetic band
> recorders' in Germany and fortunately had been able to emigrate. When ABC
> was evaluating alternatives for disk to disk editing of the Bing Crosby
> (Philco Radio Time), it looked into the BK401 & rightly rejected it as
> having sub-standard clarity as compared to state of the art disk & film
> recording at that time. What they used intially were two Magnetophones
> provided by Jack Mullin. Those same two machines were also used by Ampex
to
> reverse engineer & thus "create" their first machine, the 200A of which
they
> took delivery of the first 6 in '48.
>
> When first offered, the BK401 was not supported by the availability of any
> high quality "ribbon" (tape). For years I've been trying to determine
what
> company made the tape that Brush provided. It's my impression that 3M was
> not yet involved in making recording tape. I have a superbly working
BK401&
> some of their original tape. It's akin to running super-fine emory cloth
on
> the transport!
>
> The machine has no tape lifters & there was provided with two in-path shut
> off switches for the two paths. One was record / play & the other,
rewind.
> The rewind route bypassed the heads. The brown top plate's beautifully
silk
> screened in cream colored lettering, lines & arrows that map the paths.
>

[indy mike]

Art digs this sorta stuff - he does a lot of archival work transferring stuff from weird sources for libraries and institutions - visit his site and tell him I sent ya!

[Steve Hoffman]

More from that wacky Art:

>
> When we last left our friends they were dangling from a pathetic limp
tree,
> perilously close to the trap that Boris and Natasha had waiting some 100
> feet below....
>
> Hey, Rock? Yeh, Bullwinkle? Did ya notice how on a BK 401 there's no
pinch
> roller? Sort of anticipates the design of the Ampex ATR 100 series some
30
> years later?
>
> Hey, Rock? What? Again? No this is something different. The erase
head's
> in a cylindrical magnetic shield. The record / play head's in another.
So,
> this machine is capable of sound on sound recording WITHOUT re-recording!
> Hokie smokes Bullwinkle, you shouldn't be talking about his, our enemies
> might be listening in! Yeah! For all passes subsequent to the first one,
> you simply thread the tape BEHIND the erase shield. So, stuff can be
added
> to the recording because nothing's erased!
>
> Hey Rock, I can't hold on to this branch any longer....tough **** you big
> dumb moose! I can fly, so up your's!
>
> Pete Hammar, who founded & was the curator of the Ampex Museum of Magnetic
> Recording tells some hilarious stories about Begun. His German accent
made
> understanding him in English very difficult. But one thing that was
> perfectly clear that Jack Mullin, Ampex, ABC & the rest of the world stole
> all of his great ideas. One irony was that amongst the audio pioneers
whom
> Pete had interviewed on videotape while at Ampex, the master with the
Begun
> interview's 'MOS' because someone screwed up & didn't patch the mike, or
> whatever. So, if anyone out there can read lips in German accented
English,
> have we got a project for you!
>
> Shiffy