The Cart Machine
In my last post I mentioned that I had a sponsor for a couple of upcoming videos. This video is the first one where I will be incorporating a promotional spot for them - however before I can release it, the advertising company need to sign off that they are happy with the segment (they don’t care about the whole video…just the promo segment). They also need to know in advance what date the video will be going live…which is scheduled for Wednesday.
If you're thinking this sounds like it might be more trouble than it's worth - you're not the only one, but I'm determined to give it a go... just this once.
However I'm becoming concerned with the extended delay between video releases, and if for some reason they aren’t happy with the video, it could take until the end of the week before a revised version can be published.
So for this reason I’ve created this second version of the video that excludes the promotional segment.
This video also has all the adverts turned off, so please don’t share the link for it on a forum etc, it’s just for you, the patreon supporters. If everything goes well the full public version of this will go live on Wednesday.
The comments on youtube are deactivated, so if you have any questions or observations, please comment below and I’ll try my best to answer them.
Comments (54)
Perhaps it's just me, but I rather hope you continue to do the sponserships. I think it's a great way to integrate advertisment while still retaining your pleasent charm, and I think you should be rewarded for your great content in all ways possible. I wouldn't mind waiting a couple days if it means more money in your pocket to buy more interesting tech.
I've cancelled the agreement with the advertising company...the process was just too disruptive for me. Videos have to be pre-approved and I had to specify what day they would be coming out and there were stipulations about exactly what should be said and that the link to the company was the first thing in the video description text box. The reason I do YouTube is so that I don't have to deal with anyone telling me what to do...and this was a massive step back for me and ruined the whole process. I'd rather lose the money than lose the freedom.
Mat, I've been thinking about getting a Pioneer RT-707 for a while now. I noticed your RT-707 in the background with the custom reels for a while now, and I just knew that I should get it before you featured it in a video and prices go up. Well, just saw that your latest video featured it, and well I bit the bullet. You think my fears were unfounded? Have you noticed increases in eBay prices of things that you feature in your videos?
It's been said about some things and it might be partially true for underpriced items that would otherwise be overlooked and it just required me to highlight the value in them to the previously non aware....however for something like the RT-707, they already cost a packet and most viewers wouldn't want one, so I think you're safe.
(:
247 Radio 1, you just took me back to my childhood. Like when I saw Tony Blackburn walking down Great Portland Street a while ago. Another great Techmoan video.
This was such an awesome video!!! Very fun to watch, as well as interesting as usual :D Thanks for teaching us about more awesome retro tech Mat!
Great video, as always. I knew these cartridges existed, but not how they work, nor that they exist in different sizes. The sidetrack (har-har) to the 4-track system was also nice.
This was a great video, as usual! I really appreciate your creations, they bring me much entertainment and knowledge.
Thanks for becoming a new patron...there've been quite a few people move on in July so it's great to see some new faces.
Good job Mat! Previous to seeing your video I only heard of cart systems, now I know how they look like!
You were lucky to get in there before youtube crashed.
Kenny Lynch
Here you go Mat. Track 62 ... <a href="https://www.muziekweb.nl/Link/JK129197/We-love-the-pirates?TrackID=JK129197-0062." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.muziekweb.nl/Link/JK129197/We-love-the-pirates?TrackID=JK129197-0062.</a> :) S.
Thanks for that - it's a shame that cart was blank, but at least I've heard some of it now.
Pams are in Dallas. They were THE jingles company all through the 60s UK pirate radio era and into the start of the BBC 'Radio-by-numbers' era. Listen to the samples on the site and, as for all people of 'our age', you will find almost everything will be familiar. :-)
It was one of the standard Pams jingles, so it would not have been unique to Radio 1. I have a Radio Caroline version. It's track nine in Pams' 1964 Jet Set series demos... <a href="https://www.pams.com/cuts-27.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.pams.com/cuts-27.html</a> Having said 1964, even today, Pams will still sing you a personal version to the original music track for a couple of hundred pounds!
Thanks for that link...I'd never heard of Pams. I see that TGIF was on that page as well, as Thank Goodness It's Fun.
I can send you an MP3 of "The fastest thing in the air" if you want. OK, I'm a very sad person and collect jingles. :) Great video, Mat. I remember the Spotmaster well. Thank you for the memories.
I don't need a copy but I'd love to know whether it was a radio 1 jingle as well.
This is easily in my top 10 videos instantly, great job! As far as audio based videos, I do enjoy just seeing the tape spin around or the vu meter, it's all good.
There's something quite appealing about those ladies saying goodnight (maybe it's the accent?). Wouldn't mind a nice clean file of them for my phone 😁. We recycled dozens of those carts at work when we upgraded from analog to digital. Never was nostalgic about them until now.
I'm not sure if this is Patreon related - Every video I watch on Patreon plays ad-free with a PC browser, not just this one. If I watch them directly on YouTube, there's a 90% chance of that Wix ad playing.
That's good to know, it means I don't have to deactivate the adverts for patreon...but now I wonder if embedding videos always strips off the adverts.
It's funny, when I ran our College radio station our software all had "cart stack" programs for stacking up jingles etc. I wonder how many student DJs actually know where the "cart" part comes from!
This was a very entertaining video, and loved your Kenny Lynn impersonation :D
What a timely coincidence: <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinsavetz/status/886631795155795968" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/kevinsavetz/status/886631795155795968</a>
That link is a gold mine for me - thanks for sharing.
My only complaint is that some of the audio samples sounded a bit too loud. Aside from that minor issue, the video was great! And by any chance is your friend who recommended the wiring box named "Big Clive?" :-)
I seem to have difficulties equalising volumes. It sounds ok to me through both my speakers and headphones, I look at the levels while editing and try to line the peaks up to match the previous clips.
The station I worked at in the late 80's had been an ALL CD station, but then one day they decided they didn't like the sound of the CD's directly on the air. I had to re-dub all of the music to cart. This station was in Washington, DC. I guess the carts helped "warm up" the music since most of it was dubbed directly from CD to the cart. There were a few oddities which were not available on CD at the time and those had to be transferred from vinyl to cart. I suspect that first cart you played with Dr. Dre didn't stop at the beginning because that was probably recorded on a STEREO cart machine while yours is a mono device. The tape head track alignment would be different and yours probably wasn't hearing the cue track. The cue track, in most machines, had 3 different tones. One to stop the tape, another used to alert the DJ that the end of the song was coming and a third which could be wired to automatically trigger the next machine to start (as when the commercial was done and it would trigger the following commercial in the next machine.
I’m beginning to wonder if all the patrons have had jobs on radio at some point in the past. As far as the tones go - I suspected as much for the stereo cart but unfortunately none of the carts triggered any stops on my player - not even the one I recorded on the machine itself.
"I am the god of hellfire!" nice, didn't expect to hear that here
I think "and I bring you Kenny Lynn" sounded a bit anticlimactic after Arthur Brown's intro.
I'm also an 8-track enthusiast and have always been curious to see a Fidelipac machine in operation, so this had me captivated for the whole 24 minutes.
Thanks old chap - with audio based videos sometimes there's not really enough to look at, so it's good to know it didn't bore.
Your Kenny Lynne segment and Techmoan jingle were brilliant and hilarious! For some reason, I just had to play them over and over whilst giggling hysterically. It might be fun to bury the Techmoan jingle in the background sound of a future puppet skit in which the YouTube pedant is moaning about some rubbish he's watching as sort of a cameo or Easter egg. That is, if any of your other viewers have the same sense of humor, or same psychological problems as some might call it, as I! I suppose I could be the only viewer over 7 years old enjoying the same 5 seconds repeatedly.
I think I made a surprisingly good cheesy DJ. I'll keep hold of the 'Jingle' and it may make an appearance again at an inappropriate time.
How does the promo section work is it literally throw some money your way for including x or y section or does it include some other benefits such as access to certain difficult to get hardware or accessories, if not I wonder if that's even a possibility?
I'm not sure whether they're all the same...but the one I'm trying out pays once per video...and they decide how many spots they'll pay for.
I volunteered once at a Christian contemporary music, non-profit station. Due to staff shortages they would air a twelve-hour block of original programming, record it and then repeat it. They would announce the time just not A.M. or P.M. What did they use to record twelve hours of content back in the early 90's? Surprise - VHS in HiFi stereo mode. Near CD quality, albeit analog, I think three hours per tape. Blew my mind.
It's interesting how many people here have worked in radio at some point. It's something I've never done so I hope I don't have too many details wrong in this video.
I"ve been playing through some Radio 1 jingles on youtube and it appears that mine are from the 1960s. So that dates them a bit more accurately between 1967-1969 (assuming the person collecting them was accurate with their dating) <a href="https://youtu.be/fbGfYTTy3S0?t=2m9s" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/fbGfYTTy3S0?t=2m9s</a> Some of these were used for years though.
Hi Mat! Take a look at this link: <a href="http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__6488.aspx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__6488.aspx</a> . Evidently Kenny Lynn was a nightclub DJ in Brighton, who perhaps wore a ridiculous white one-piece cat suit. Which would certainly be consistent with that period :)
I wasn't sure on the spelling - I managed to find a couple of mentions of club DJs with that name...but this chap must have been on the radio to need a cart. I wonder if Brighton's Kenny Lyn had a radio show.
I had no idea they made broadcast carts that big! At one point I had a few EchoMatic carts in hopes of finding a machine for them, excited to see you even mention it as I always thought it was an oddity from Ohio here.
I've seen a couple of Cousino machines for sale over the years...but without a stack of pre-recorded carts it didn't make me any sense for me to bid on them.
Excellent vid
I worked at a radio station using carts until at least 2009, We had approximately 3000 carts of music (these would usually be marked with C or F to determine if they ended "cold" or faded out), as well as many of our ads. We also used CDs alongside the carts, and later minidiscs before eventually a computer control was installed. Since the machines we had could record but not erase, we used to record ads on reel to reels then dub onto carts using Sonifex machines. By 2009 the equipment we had was getting on a bit with increasing jamming or the cues failing, resulting in tapes starting part way through or after playing they would fast forward forever.
I wonder if you could clear up something that has been intriguing me - was the factor that determined why a track ended up being played from a cart rather than from a CD?
I'm surprised carts would be difficult to find used. We still had a working cart machine we used for intro music at a college TV station I worked at all the way up to 2012 and I imagine it's probably still in use now.
I have a feeling if they work then there's still a demand for them in the industry...so no need to sell them off on eBay.
We have come a long way. You can, in theory, run a whole radio station from your frigging phone nowadays if you want, with the beginnings of that miniaturization starting in the mid to late 90s with the first halfway decent DJ programs and enough space to fit your music library on a bunch of harddisks. Still love that pre-digitization tech tough, you could have almost the same comfort, just needed a "tiny" bit more space. ;)
I remember seeing carts used in a radio station in the 1980s and they looked out of date then, so it's amazing that they are still around. However with a tape speed of 7.5 ips a cart on a decent machine will sound better than the FM or Digital radio signal broadcasting it.