Re origin of 3 track 1/2" recorders and reasons for their use:

The first 3 track 1/2" tape recorder I sold was made custom for my client, Okley Thorn who wanted a special machine to create a film which was his thesis. He insisted on a 350 deck for portability. It was much before syl-sync and had a 300 style head assembly with 3 separate stacked erase heads, 3 separate 350 electronics one with a master bias oscillator and the other two were slaves. I sent it, before delivery to the end user, to Col. Ranger to install one of his sync. heads so the machine could be locked with a film channel. Thorn put dialog on one channel, background music on another and sound effects on the third.

It was a very timely delivery date because Duke Ellington and his band were guests of the NBC Symphony at a special concert at Carnegie hall. The occasion was the first reading of his tone poem "Harlem" with his band seated right in the center of the NBC Orchestra and he played an enormous Steinway Grand Piano, center stage. I took advantage of the occasion , getting approval from Local 802 American Federation of Musicians and paid 4 teamsters at Carnegie Hall to carry the equipment in for me.

I set up 3 Altec lipstick condenser mikes on, specially built for the occasion, high stands. The capsules were 21c’s especially modified for me by my dear friend John Hilliard.

The recording is famous-Ross Snyder borrowed the master tape from me to play at the Acoustical Society meeting in San Francisco the following year ( not until I got him to promise to return it with the playback head assembly they had to make to play it.) The next morning after the concert, I played it back in the Symphony of the Air office –top of Carnegie Hall. I used 3 Ampex portable 600 Speaker systems. The Duke was there wearing one of his famous camels hair coats. He loved the sound and said "That is better than Hi Fi".

Since then I have made several mixes to 2 track so we can play it on a convention stereo system. Each time I had the occasion to use a better studio, I would make a new mix. To this day that recording has never been released. Ask Ross about the CD copy I made and we took to a high end Audio Show in New York.

The second two 3 track BD" machines were delivered to RCA at a recording session they made at Republic Studios in Hollywood. They were portable 300 decks with the same electronic setup as the Thorn recorder minus the film sync head. The incident that generated this sale was a lunch I was having with Bill Miltenberg (then chief engineerof RCA Recording Division). We were discussing the problems he was having recording Heifetz in stereo on the BD" 2 track Ampexes that I sold to RCA. He said that Heifetz swings back and forth when he plays and would pop from the right to left speaker.

I told him the solution was simple-just buy one of the 3 track machines like the Thorn machine and put a single mic.on the center track so the problem could be solved in the final mix to 2 track. He immediately gave me an order for 2 machines. In those days RCA operated with 3 pairs of recorders, one set for 24^th street, one set for the USA road crew and one set to Italy for the European crew.

The first session with those machines was at Republic Studios in Hollywood and the occasion was recording the Mozart Duo Concertante featuring Jascha Heifetz, violinist and William Primrose, violist.

I flew out for the occasion and it was most enjoyable. When I got there early in the morning, I met Mort Fuji for the first time. He was sitting on the floor holding a soldering iron making some of the latest modifications to the bias oscillator.

Since I am still here and 79 years old, this story is from the horses’ mouth.

Sincerely,

David Sarser

PS Ross Snyder tells me that Ampex delivered a 3 track 1/2" inch recorder to
Capital Recording for experiments even before the Thorn machine. I doubt
however that at that time it had seperate erase heads. I wish there was
someone around to tell us what really went on at Capitol. I still believe
that RCA was the first to use it on live classical recordings.

From ampex-digest V1 #863