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NOTE: None of the Vintage Museum items are for sale.
Manufacturer Profiles
This
is a list of information we have gathered from a variety of sources on some of the major analog reel to reel tape recorder and related equipment manufacturers. While we have strived to provide the best information available to us, there will be corrections and additions. We include personal stories about the companies when they are provided to us. We always invite input on corrections and updates. Thank you!
View calendar which lists company creation dates associated with world and recording history
ITC - International Tapetronics Corporation
Formed in 1969 in Bloomington, Illinois the International Tapetronics Corporation (ITC) tasked itself with the: design, production, and resale of professional grade audio equipment, for use within the field of radio and television. While perhaps antiquated by the time of the digital era, the products produced by ITC were revolutionary for their time period, launching the broadcasting industry into new heights.
The ITC collection includes a wide variety of documents from 1975 to 1990 including: patents for various manufactured products, internal correspondence, correspondence to ISU and IWU, curriculum lists for electrical engineering, translated scholarly articles concerning magnetic tape recorders, a manual for the DELTA machine, various program sheets for the goals and development of ITC, sales and inventory sheets, member lists, electrical engineering publishing’s, and a short history of ITC along with written works about ITC.
Another popular machine that has the distinction of being possibly the simplest broadcast automation reel>reel transport ever designed was the ITC 750. Made by a broadcast tape cartridge machine company (International Tapetronics Corporation) it used some principles from the broadcast cartridge machines, including air-damped solenoids for near silent starts and stops, and their low speed direct-drive 440rpm capstan motors. It featured rugged momentary push button controls, an optical tape-break sensor, differential breaking, and front panel level controls.
In this ad (rt)from Broadcasting magazine, you can see the elegance of simplicity in the design as seen from the back. You can see the vertical cylinder of the air-damped solenoid in the center of the panel. You'll also notice the "budget" price for this play-only machine.
While certainly crude by today's standards, and even crude by standards of the time in many ways, these work-horses provided millions of hours of on-air playback of stereo tape, and required very little maintenance beyond routine tape path cleaning. There were far more elegant and feature-rich, lower cost consumer machines of the day (Sony TC756, as one example), but those would fail quickly under the strain of 24/7/365 service, while these two decks would run for years on end. They would be retired only when the broadcast automation systems were replaced by live operations (when FM became the broadcast money-maker), and music would be delivered from broadcast tape cartridge machines, which was not an improvement in audio quality at all.
It's doubtful anyone would find either of these particularly useful for audiophile tape systems, but the machines we now have had their heritage in machines like these.
As a side note, the Scully 280 and 280B machines configured as 4, 8, and 16 track machines, recorded a good many of the best multitrack masters of the late 1960s and 1970s. Many components of those fine studio machines were shared by the big 270 automation monster.
source audionirvana.org/Bob Boyer
Time for New Tape Decks
The entire music library for KWWR and KXEO was on 10" reel to reel tapes as we were doing upgrades to the transmission systems of both stations. But state of the art processing for both KWWR and KXEO, pointed out that we needed some new reel to reel tape decks badly.
Both Harris System 90s had 3 different brands of reel to reel tape decks in the early 80s. Once we went 24 hours a day on both KWWR and KXEO, some of the older tape decks didn't last very long.
Fortunately both systems had at least a few ITC-750 reel to reel playback machines. They were great tape decks - all of the electronics was in one central housing on the back of the deck, the head was easily accessible under a flip up door on the front. And replacing other parts as they wore out, like brakes for the take up and supply reels was very convenient on the 750s.
Dick Wagner with Concept had heard of a station that had gone through a fire - and although the tape decks only received minor smoke damage - that station was selling 6 or 7 ITC-750s/770s for about half the cost of new ones. We were able to replace ALL of the aging reel to reel decks for both KWWR and KXEO with the ITC tape decks, making head alignment, cleaning and other repair work standardized among of the reel to reel tape machines. Parts were readily available and we brought all of our tapes decks up to new specifications in the early 80s.
That was a major improvement for both KWWR and KXEO.
But another problem created by broadcasting 24 hours a day was the reel to reel tape heads would wear out in several months, requiring replacement at a cost of a few hundred dollars each time for each deck.
Jerry thought there had to be a better way to keep them up to date than complete head replacement every few months - and he was right. I checked into it and found Nortronics made a tape head relapping kit. So when the tape heads were worn down by the constant playing of tapes, they could be relapped 2 or 3 times instead of being replaced. The relapping kit cost a couple of hundred dollars, but being able to relap the heads meant getting up to a year or more out of each head. The Nortronics relapping kit used several different densities of abrasive paper, to take the flat and worn spot off a tape head and return the head to near new specifications. It was a manual process requiring just a bit of finesse!
So how did we know when it was time to relap a tape head? Easy - the high frequency sound response of the tape deck would start to drop dramatically - so I could hear when a head needed relapping. But that wasn't a very good system either, because it allowed the music on a particular tape deck to sound muffled before relapping a head. So I instituted a regular maintenance program to inspect the tape deck heads every month, and if I saw signs of wear on the head, I knew it was time for relapping.
State of the art audio processing AND state of the art tape decks in the 80s for both KWWR and KXEO made us sound dramatically better than other stations in the area.
But the end of life for both The Harris System 90 AND the reel to reel tape decks was inevitable, as new technologies came along after the invention and widespread use of the Personal Computer.
The pay wasn't great and I knew I'd never get rich working in small market radio, but being able to embrace new technology was extremely rewarding and produced an FM radio station and an AM radio station in the small market of Mexico, Missouri, that I could be extremely proud of.
So it goes.
source: garyaleonard.blogspott
Before his resignation at Harris, Jenkins was working on a new tape deck design. Franklin, Rector, Jenkins (as President, Sales Manager and CE respectively) and several backers then formed a new company south of Bloomington called ITC (International Tapetronics Control). The ITC designs were all pure Jenkins. The RP and SP machines were known as workhorses that truly merited the label "Premium Series." In the late 1970s, the "99" series was born, a combination recorder, player, eraser and splice locator. ITC was purchased by 3M in 19xx. 3M sold it to Don Carle and Al Taylor in 1990. The company did not do well and went out of business in the 90s.
The RP/SP series were among the most popular of all cart machines.
