Restore, Ampex VR-1200B, Part Four

How to video on restoration and adjustment of the Ampex VR-1200B Quad VTR. Part Four.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Ampex
• video
• 1200B
• television
• restore
• repair
• Quad
• VTR

[Audiovideopark]

Do you mean the quick freeze spray? Just hold an air can upside down and the propellent will spray out. It is super cold.

[sonnygon]

if you need any parts we made them here in colorado springs for 30 years at our high precision machine shop. all the shafts, air guides,idle shafts,capstan shafts,all the mechanical for the video heads.i used to grind the pintch roller that you showed.

[Audiovideopark]

Hi. That's great to know. Please send contact info.

[Audiovideopark]

Not done yet. Been tied up with other projects. Coming soon...

[Maxxarcade]

This is an awesome restoration project! I've always been curious about early VTR machines.

Is there a good place to read up on them further? I'm especially interested in the tube based ones. Haven't seen any videos of those yet.

From the various videos I've seen so far, it seems like people handle the tape with bare hands a lot, especially while threading. Doesn't that get the heads dirty?

[Audiovideopark]

Tape Ops don't wear gloves unless handling very old and important tape. You are just touching the head of the tape and it doesn't contaminate the rest of the tape. All VTRs need to be cleaned with Xylene and that will destroy any oils on the VTR. With Quad, you clean the VTR after EACH tape. The only tube VTRs were Quads from the 50's. I don't know of any operating today.

[rty1955]

I worked on every machine Ampex made! from the VR-1000's to AVR-3 Including the ACR-25! There is nothing like a quad! Very simple tape path. In my opinion the VR-200B's were the best. But then again the AVR-2 was very impressive! The 1200's were constantly going out of alignment! The 2000's were rock solid! I knew the techs at NBC hated the RCA Quads, but that's all they could use, because they were owned by RCA. Even a crease in the tape went by with just a blip on the screen, try that with 1"!

[JULIAN8845]

Fantastic video's.Would like to hear more about the difference between 1200

A,B and C variants.IT's ironic that we went from film to video and know back to film

to load into AVID.It's a crying shame that the BBC did not make a film copy before

they wiped all those 70's tapes and cost them millions in lost DVD revenue(DR WHO

alone )

[Mulletsrokkify]

Looking forward to part 5. They sure don't make kit like this any more!

[kludgeaudio]

Sonnygon, were you with Jackson and Heit? I know they made the scanner assemblies for a lot of those.

[rty1955]

haha OMG head grind. ouch! I remember when our place had lost our main compressor (central compressor was in the basement) and all the machine shut down because of low air pressure. What a scramble that was!

[vincedog3]

Wow incredible video. I enjoy watching these classic machines brought back to life.

Thank you for your videos.

[fertub26]

what kind of liquid is this spray?

[artifactingreality]

I find this machine incredibly interesting. All the cards, motors, noises etc. I'll never use one of these but I still find it strangely interesting to watch someone else maintain one.

[douglas787]

Massive power supply bank! I myself perfer the old iron core transformers and massive caps to the new swichmode power supplies of today. You never really had much trouble with the old design and they were easy to fix. Nowdays a 1000 watt power supply weighs a couple of pounds but it can fail unexpectedly, can be difficult to get parts for, and it not very immune to power surges, spikes or much of anything else. I refer to swichmode supplies as "Glass PS".