Interview with Frank Schmidt Part Three                            Back

It’s well known that the first 8-track players were car decks that came out in the Fords in the fall of 1965. Can you tell me about those?

There were four basic units that Lear made in the beginning: two under-dash units and two in-dash units. The under-dash units used a U-shaped metal bracket to hand the player under the dash, or reverse the bracket and mount on the hub. These two models were either just straight 8-track players, or a combination 8-track and A.M. radio (pictured). Then there were two identical models that were for in-dash mounting.

How did the Ford connection come about?

Lear was very tight with Henry Clay Ford. I remember when they brought Ford’s personal black Lincoln to the plant in a semi. They shipped it down from Detroit. We took into our model shop and proceeded to completely remove the entire dash. I remember it had a beautiful dash: die-cast aluminum with striping. We put it on a milling machine and cut the openings for one of our players for a custom-mounting unit. We ended up breaking the casting, so we had to order another one from our local Ford dealer. We ended up breaking 3 of them before we got one that worked. But it was a really neat installation.

So that was basically the first 8-track installation?

Yes, other than some that he put in airplanes. He put some in Learjets and one in the Learstar, which was a big twin-engine plane he used for business travel.

Another one of the interesting car installations was in 1965. We showed up at work and everyone was gathered around a car… it was Elvis Presley’s gold Cadillac from RCA Records. We put two 8-track players in it and about eight speakers.

Why two players?

I don’t know. That’s what they wanted. It was a beautiful car. Everything on it was gold plated.

When the first 8-track players were starting to hit the public in the '65 Fords, do you remember a lot of fanfare? Was it considered a great triumph? Were people really excited at the company?

We were all glad to see the product in production. There was no real great triumph at the time as we were too busy on the next product the 110 v home machine in a wooden cabinet.

What about the tapes? Where were they made?

We had our own audio laboratory. We basically took it off of LP records and made a master tape. Our audio engineer, a German lady named Krista, had two little slave decks where she could make duplicates. She made all the cartridges there. And of course to begin with we used the cobbled-up Muntz cartridges. Later on when we got into the design of the Lear cartridge, and started getting the pieces together, we got a custom molder to make our first prototype. We would mold parts, try them out, make modifications, and try it again, and so on. Trying to solve one problem after another. One of the big problems we had was tracking; another was getting them to rotate freely. Developing that bottom shelf, which helped the tracking a lot.

Something I’ve always been fascinated with is the mechanism that moves the head down to the next piece of tape at the end of a track…

You like that? I invented that thing. The entire ramp and drop mechanism. Somewhere there’s a patent for that with my name on it. Bill’s, Sam’s [Auld], and mine. It was, of course, all turned over to the Lear company. I am not sure where the idea come from originally, might have been one of Bill's. It was a round disc that had stars on the out side diameter. A solenoid which was activated by the aluminum tape passing over a switch or if you pushed the track button, would rotate the disc 45 degrees. There is a little stair step circular ramp around the top of the disc for 180 degrees then it repeats. Each step is the distance between a track on the tape. You lift the head which is in a holder and spring loaded to remain in contact with the ramp, after 4 clicks you are on the top step. The order of play starting at the bottom of the tape is 1-5; 2-6; 3-7; 4-8 these are the 8 tracks or 4 stereo channels. When you finish the 4-8 tracks the head is dropped to the bottom of the ramp and you start over again. After 8 clicks the head cam has rotated one full turn.

Yes, we were all told we were crazy to move the head, but it was easier than moving the tape. At this time an 8-track play head was thought to be impossible as to the cost involved. Record heads were very expensive and custom made, but as progress marched on the record feature was available to the consumer. I got it to work and designed the head holder and the ramp disc. I remember the first solenoids came from a Radio Shack store.

People always say "why do they call it 8-track anyway"? And I enjoy telling them how it’s really 8 individual audio tracks lined up parallel to each other.

If you ever want to see the tracks, take a piece of 8-track tape about 4 inches long and dust it with some really fine ferrous oxide powder. Very carefully blow it off, but not too much. Then take a piece of Scotch tape and press it down and peel the tape off slowly. What you’ll have left on there are all the tracks. We used to do that and look at them under a microscope to look at the track separation.

What did you do in the years after you left the Lear Company?

I ended up leaving Detroit. One of the guys on the team, an electronics technician named Vic, had left a few months earlier and started a company called RAEL. I went to work with him. We did tape duplication. We had about 15 Ampex slave decks and a master. What we would do is get music, usually from RCA, remaster it down to an 8-track, you know, because you have to lay the tapes out so that nothing comes on the splice… you have to work around the splice so that the splice is a blank spot. We would then make the tape. I remember that the first one we made was "Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass." To this day I cannot listen to that music (laughs).

So that involved the art of fitting the music into four equal lengths of time. Which brings me to my question about the infamous "fade out," which is what people always remember the 8-track tape for. You’re grooving along to your song and all the sudden it starts fading out – kerchunk –- then it fades back up.

If you really weren’t too good at it, they’d fade it out before it hit the splice joint then fade it back up. If you were really good at it, you would re-edit the thing so you didn’t fade it out; it started and stopped around the splice.

You had to rearrange the songs...

Yes, you had to re-arrange the music. That’s the correct way of doing it.

I know that some collectors have made note of famous albums that have the tracks rearranged. A particularly famous one is the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper’s" album where they throw an extra chorus on a song to extend the track a little.

Oh yeah. A lot of stuff like that was done. Another problem we had was that we used to get a 1" master reel-to-reel from RCA, but our master machine was ½", so we had to get a ½" copy made. So where do find this kind of professional equipment in Detroit? You have to remember that this was the 60’s, and there wasn’t a lot of equipment like this around. Dick finally found a place downtown… only problem was that we had to do it late at night, usually after midnight. We would rent some time on their studio equipment because they weren’t using it then. It was an outfit called Motown Records. It was just a hole in the wall, upstairs on the third floor…. it was nothing! But at least they had the equipment, and they were kind enough to rent it to us late at night. I remember going down there lots of times and sitting around waiting while they were finishing up a session. There were some black gals singing… they were called The Supremes. We used to sit around and talk with Berry Gordy [founder of Motown] all the time.

NEXT >

Back to [CONTENTS]