My Year at AMPEX page 5

If the last hub load ran out of tape, it was also discarded. Because there was no backing up to see where the pilot tone really was, the tape contained within the tensioning and floating arm loops needed to be long enough that once it was detected, that section of tape would end up approximately at the loop between hubs. This is the reason that the track start/end gaps were so long. If there was 30" of tape in the tensioning and floating arms loops and the tone ended up halfway through, there would be about 6 seconds of dead tape between the tone and the hub switchover loop (at the normal playback speed of 3.75 inches per second). There was another problem with this loop in that there was a variable amount of tape in the feed from the tensioning loop to the floating arm depending upon whether or not the carriage was toward the front or rear of the machine. For these reasons, the lengths of "dead" tape surrounding a splice would vary somewhat under perfect circumstances, and will rarely if ever be close to zero (at least on tapes produced by that equipment).

After a hub stack had been wound, the operators would snip the feed tape, load the next hub stack and start it up, and take the wound stack to their benches. They would then remove the clamp and snip all the edge loops to create individual tapes. These were taken off the shaft and placed in padded carrying boxes much like the cassette tapes after removal from the Phillips winders.

An original splicing block from the Ampex plant, courtesy the author.

At another work area, about 1 foot of tape was de-reeled from each hub. A splicing block, single edge razor blade, and a pre-cut sensing tape were then used to splice the tape, and the resulting loop tape was manually placed into a lower cartridge half. The pinch roller, foam pad (or in the not so cheap days, a brass or bronze spring and felt pads), and sometimes a brass or slippery plastic ferrule on the feed-out side and "stripper" block next to the pinch roller were installed. The tape was routed so that the two sides of the loop came out a single front hole (usually but not always the pinch roller opening), and the cover was snapped or pressed into place. The operator would then hold the tape up and lightly grasp the feed side of the loop near the cartridge. They wore cotton gloves because the lubricant on the tape is somewhat irritating to the skin in long-term exposure. With a small, swift pulling motion, they would get the tape moving, let go, and the loop would magically disappear up into the cartridge. Some operators would wind the hubs by hand before putting the covers on to take up the loop, but it was far too slow for most people and when the production lines were busy. The first time I saw someone do that I was amazed.

I had a sheet or two of factory splices, but they have long since deteriorated and been discarded. I wish I had even one to show you. They had a diagonally cut piece of the sensing foil in the 1/4" width (many people assumed it was 1" and applied diagonally) with a plastic tab loosely stuck to the non-glue side. The operator would put the tape ends into the splicing block, zip the razor blade across the perpendicular cutting slot, and remove the top scrap piece. The underside scrap was removed after the spliced tape was removed from the block. They would apply the splice lengthwise into the splicing block slot and then smooth and push it tight with a fingertip. They would then peel off the plastic tab which was red on one end (supposedly to be applied to the leading direction of the splice). As you can see, this took a moment or so to so, therefore they didn't have time to do things like holding down the ends of the tape to prevent its being drawn into a worn out slot. That's why they chucked worn blocks in the trash. They weren't worth the time or effort to mess with.

And that's it? Well, not quite.

There were a lot of problems with 8-track tapes that would jam up in a customer's player on the first play-through because of the aforementioned tensioning problems, or the splicing operator would fail to pull a large enough loop, or the tape lubricant was old, or the splice adhesive oozed out, or who knows what. Longer "double" album tapes such as the single-cartridge versions of "Woodstock", "Electric Ladyland" and "Layla" were especially vulnerable because thinner tape and sometimes smaller hub centers were used. If you had just paid $16 for one of these tapes (when gasoline was $0.34 a gallon, and you were well paid at $4.10 an hour) and it jammed up the first time you played it, wouldn't you be just a tad bit upset? And if it jammed your player too, wrapped itself around your capstan, and stuck inside, well......

The solution was that each tape was run through its entire length at least a couple of times at about 4x normal speed. For a typical album tape, each track was about 10 minutes in length, so this took 4-5 minutes per tape. Each tape was placed into a specially designed and built motorized fixture that had an AC motor, a capstan, a splice sensor, couple of neon lights, and some control relays and a track counter. The operators would shove the cartridge in, push a start button and let it rip until it stopped with the pass light on, popped out on its own, jammed, blew the fixture's circuit breaker, or whatever. Of course when they jammed hard, de-reeled, stuck, or anything like that, they called me. I have seen cases where seemingly half the tape in the cartridge ended up wrapped around the capstan before it finally ground to a halt. There were more than 100 of these gadgets assembled into a wall, and there were one or two operators whose job it was to sequence them in and out and to keep the lots separated. As you may guess, these also kept me fairly busy. It is also the reason that brand new Ampex tapes seldom had the splices visible upon opening the wrappers. The motor stopped pretty fast, but not that fast. It would overshoot by a couple of inches or more. Periodically I had to forego my normal lunch break to open and clean all of these fixtures while everyone else took theirs.

Finally, those that passed the run-through test were labeled with heat-sensitive glued labels (do not leave them out in the sun, that's easily hot enough to peel or pucker the labels). These were then inserted into the sleeves, which had their own slightly different heat-glued labels. The resulting assembly was heat-shrink wrapped and placed into a stacker/boxer that counted, boxed and sealed the final product. A rotary ink stamp labeled the boxes as they rolled toward pallets and storage areas. The stacker/boxer accounted for its share of casualties (slashed sleeves, ripped labels, and so forth). Thankfully I didn't have to work on it, as someone else had that responsibility.

The QC operators would spend much of their time at the ends near the master machines listening to sample tapes selected at random. This was much more critical for 8-tracks than for the other formats because of all the things that could go wrong. Others would listen to finished tapes.

I was at AMPEX when they were transitioning from the rubber-faced pinch rollers to the solid plastic ones. At the time, I hated the plastic ones because every time you inserted and withdrew them the capstan would mark the tape. There were at least two styles of rubber used on the other ones. There was a grey molded roller that was superb and has held up all these years in every cartridge I have that has them. The "rubber band" version (typically dark grey or black over a plastic hub) get gummy, will actually sag with age, and will destroy your tapes if let unattended. Get rid of any of these you have. At the time I liked these the best. Oh well, 20-20 hindsight. Of course you realize that 8-tracks were designed to self-destruct (or at least passively deteriorate) after only about 100 plays (some have said it is only 25 plays, but I would dispute that). The attitude in the music industry at that time seemed to be that "popular" music was throwaway. This is the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Cream, Traffic, etcetera, etc. that we are talking about here. Throwaway??? Also at the time, I chose the 8-track route because I was (and am) extremely picky about my music and the 8-track represented the highest level of fidelity I could obtain (remember, this was pre-Dolby so far as cassettes were concerned). Cassettes were for dictating machines and kids toys, and open reels were out of the question for automotive use. I also used to pick up spare change fixing everyone's tape players (all kinds), and even worked weekends installing car stereos. I got to loathe the cassette players of the time rather quickly. Within 10 years, however, I had switched to cassettes for convenience (and Dolby), and about 10 years later I transitioned to CDs. It's still all about the music to me.

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