AndyB Posted February 9, 2013 Report Share Posted February 9, 2013 I don't know if you all have seen this, but I found a nice item on Ebay. Who wants it? I love cool old gear like this! http://www.ebay.com/itm/STELLAVOX-NAGRA-CUSTOM-CONSOLE-MIC-PRE-AMP-MIXER-M101-SENNHEISER-DENECKE-/150988643947?_trksid=p5197.m1992&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14136%26meid%3D5479916346505074734%26pid%3D100015%26prg%3D1085%26rk%3D2%26sd%3D321065157252%26 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirror Posted February 9, 2013 Report Share Posted February 9, 2013 That is an Awesome piece of gear! I'm bidding on it. Perfect car rig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikefilosa Posted February 9, 2013 Report Share Posted February 9, 2013 I have been eyeing this as well, but just from a curiosity standpoint. It is a remarkably compact piece of engineering that probably exceeded, by far, most requirements for two track TC.recording back in that day..... wireless was not all that prevalent. I am speculating that the channel strips were lifted from a neat portable Sennheiser mixer from the 70's- they look very similar to the first field panel that I ever ran, back in 1978. I am not sure what the S/N characteristics are going to be here, compared to today's technology and expectations. Whoever constructed this paid a lot of attention to detail and certainly a lot of time pre-planning - and had to be an astute electrical genius, too ! I'd can't remember any provision for "talkback" in those days with other types of gear. Though Tuchels are not speedy, they are certainly solid connectors that get the job done. Whoever "gets it" -- I hope you can get some background on it's design and evolution, if the "creator" is the one on the selling end. MF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikefilosa Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 Wait a minute - TC recording in the late '70s No way - This might be more recently constructed than that by a decade.... My first TC nagra work was around late 80s I think, maybe 1988, can't remember.... it was a rental machine from ASC ! Does anyone know if the Stellavox pictured is actually a TC machine, a modifed (ala TimeCode Systems Nagra 4S) or possibly laying TC to track 2 for later resolve? This could be a good hlstory thread..... MF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 The Stellavox SP-8 came out in 1975 and I'm pretty sure it never had timecode capabilities. It did have an interchangeable headstack making it one of the first if only recorders that could be either a true mono full track recorder or a stereo 2-track recorder. Any timecode setup depicted in the photos must have involved recording timecode to track 2 as audio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyB Posted February 10, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 There are some pretty good closeups of the wiring. Maybe someone savvy in these things could figure out what's really going on here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 I may not have gotten this correct --- there may have been a way to access the center track and put time ode there in place of FM sync. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 There might have been a Stella that could do TC at the very end, but I'm not totally sure. This set up could also be a custom job, starting with a Stella synchro-tone sync setup and sklunging TC into the pilotone track from the external TC gen. Ivan Krugelach @ Coherent Communications had a (somewhat more compact) TC gen to do this trick that attached to the bottom of a Nagra IV-SL. (This was early 1980s). Bill Ruck modded my Nagra IV-SL to do a similar thing (and even got one of Andy Cooper's TC resolvers to work with it) a few years before the Harvey Warnke mods came along. So it is certainly possible that this Stella can record and playback TC. To those of you looking at this rig as something you'd want to put into immediate service on real jobs....hold up. All those caps are many years beyond their rated lives now. Unless you are a good tech yourself or know one well you are going to spend some money getting this thing battle ready. It is very possible that Sennheiser may not have relevant parts anymore. I would add by modern standards the thing is HUGE for a 4-input device--compare to 744T or Zax MAXX etc! I seem to recall there being a NYC sound mixer who in the 1970s advertised himself as having his whole world in two Halliburtons like this, which he could transport on a motorcycle. I recall being very impressed at the time--esp with the mixer/recorder rig and the ability to mount it on a low-boy Junior stand. Perhaps this is his rig--if so it belongs in the mixer hall of fame along with that setup of Bruce Bisenz. Does anyone know his name? philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 Better item for collectors than users IMO. Looks cool, but..... CrewC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nwstudios Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 Nice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DWsoundservice Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 I am not sure how this would work today from an operations standpoint but, looking at it on a pure technical basis, I am rather impressed. The routing of the wires and cable is extremely well organized, and the soldering is clean, with most of the solder connections protected by shrink-wrap. The design is well thought out. I have worked on equipment from major mfg that were not this well done. The trouble I see is exactly as Philip mentioned above. The caps are almost a old as I am. As they begin to fail, if they have not done so already, your noise floor will rise quite a bit, or you will have no audio at all. The first thing I would do, if you were planning to put it to use in the field, is change out all of the caps. This could end up costing more than the purchase price, and would be a bit time consuming. I just finished doing the same thing to an old Kenwood ham transceiver. It is a slow process. The second concern I see is at the bottom of several of the boards. In a couple of the pictures, there is some type of contamination on the bottom of the boards. It may be nothing at all and can just be cleaned, but, it may also be something serious. Without getting a close look, it would be hard to tell. My best advise would be, Buyer beware. BTW, I saw the blue Zero box and half expected to see an old Vega quad package. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyB Posted February 10, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 Just to be clear, I didn't post this link thinking that it was something someone could actually use in a production environment today. I only posted it because it was something unusual, and maybe even one of a kind, and maybe worth an interested party picking up solely to keep it out of the landfill and maybe put it in a museum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirror Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 SOLD for $127.50. Not to me. I decided as cool as it is, it would just clutter up my overly cluttered garage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted February 10, 2013 Report Share Posted February 10, 2013 The Stellavox SP-8 came out in 1975 and I'm pretty sure it never had timecode capabilities. It did have an interchangeable headstack making it one of the first if only recorders that could be either a true mono full track recorder or a stereo 2-track recorder. Any timecode setup depicted in the photos must have involved recording timecode to track 2 as audio. I can't remember ever using SMPTE timecode even in videotape until about 1979 or 1980 at the very earliest, and in reality it was more like 1982. I know EECO had their own early timecode system going back to 1967, but I never saw anybody use it in the work I did in Florida in the 1970s. I bet this is something somebody modified in the 1980s. I think in the early 1980s, we couldn't even run timecode Nagra tapes with film in post -- we had to send the 1/4" out to a house (like Jeff's old company) to transfer to mag, and then we'd just manually sync it up with the clap sticks. I think it was 1987 or so when I saw my first Nagra T, and that's when we started routinely syncing up Nagra timecode projects in telecine. I can't recall ever seeing a situation where we had audio on channel 1 and TC on channel 2; it could theoretically work, provided the reference signals were good and the machine was stable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikefilosa Posted February 11, 2013 Report Share Posted February 11, 2013 Marc, I agree with you about SMPTE TC- I do not remember seeing anything but a counter on any Sony or Ampex "portable" (barely) 1" and early 3/4" video tape machines until Sony came out with their 3/4 deck - the big one (5800?, 6800? ) .... Perhaps Charlie @ Denecke can chime in on the evolution of timecode in our business, as it was clearly Mike Denecke driving that bus. He saw the potential for sure! MF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Smith Posted February 11, 2013 Report Share Posted February 11, 2013 Someone obviously spent some time and effort putting this together-it's a sweet little package! Not really sure how much us it would be in today's production world, but it make a great conversation piece! Based on what I see in the listing, my guess is the the original configuration was for a pilottone version of the Stella, with the timecode generator added later. Not exactly sure what function the DigiMax frequency counter serves, but it is a handy instrument (I still have one on my bench). FWIT: The Sennheiser input strips were first manufactured in 1970. I had occasion to use the Sennheiser M101 a few times in the mid-Seventies. Interesting little package, sort of like a Nagra BM mixer on steroids. The mic pre's weren't really much to write home about, but at the time, there wasn't really much else out there in terms of portable battery operated mixers except the Sela and Perfectone (and Audio Developments, which were rare in the States). The only real downside was the lack of any EQ on the input modules (although there was some basic eq on the buss masters). Sennheiser also made a companion piece to the mixer called the ML101, which was a loudspeaker monitor unit with some additional routing functions. Both of these were rather rare in the US, I think I have ever only seen two of them. The only manual I have is in German-I don't recall if they even bothered doing an English version. To the best of my knowledge, the only timecode version of the Stella was the SP9, which could be fitted with a stereo timecode headblock (SPS-1/2), and timecode generator (ATC-3). I have only ever seen one of these machines up close. There was also a universal headblock (MSP-1/-), but I don't think I have ever actually seen one. The Stellavox is a quirky little beast. Manufactured by ex-Nagra chief engineer Georges Quellet, it featured interchangeable headblocks for different speed and tape setup parameters, as opposed to Nagra's approach of switchable speeds and equalization (which worked fairly well, but had some compromises). Despite it's various quirks, the Stella is still highly prized by many audiophiles, who claim that some of it's specs for frequency response and wow & flutter performance are better than Nagra's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pverrando Posted February 12, 2013 Report Share Posted February 12, 2013 Somewhere, I have the name of the deceased mixer who owned this gear. He was a member of Local 52 and had a couple of "hybrid" mixer/recorder/tc/boom com packages custom built into Halliburton cases, The first, also sold on ebay was in a wooden box, which bore his name on the underside of the package. The seller acquired his estate and has been liquidating it for months. Lots of Stellavox stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyB Posted February 12, 2013 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2013 Thanks for the insight, pverrando! I think it would be awesome if a name could be put to the gear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted February 12, 2013 Report Share Posted February 12, 2013 I can't remember ever using SMPTE timecode even in videotape until about 1979 or 1980 at the very earliest, and in reality it was more like 1982. I know EECO had their own early timecode system going back to 1967, but I never saw anybody use it in the work I did in Florida in the 1970s. I bet this is something somebody modified in the 1980s. I think in the early 1980s, we couldn't even run timecode Nagra tapes with film in post -- we had to send the 1/4" out to a house (like Jeff's old company) to transfer to mag, and then we'd just manually sync it up with the clap sticks. I think it was 1987 or so when I saw my first Nagra T, and that's when we started routinely syncing up Nagra timecode projects in telecine. I can't recall ever seeing a situation where we had audio on channel 1 and TC on channel 2; it could theoretically work, provided the reference signals were good and the machine was stable. One Pass Inc , in SF, was very advanced in trying to bring "film style" shooting to video, and video editing convenience and speed to all kinds of shoots. We were using 3/4" decks w/outboard SMPTE generators as well as BVH500 portable 1" decks w/ SMPTE in the late 1970s to feed BVH1000- based CMX online editing suites. OPV had the ex-CMX genius Tom Werner as its chief engineer (we even had a "touch screen" CMX 1000 light-pen editing system!)--he made this all happen. Were definitely running 1/4" TC by 1982 or so, with the Coherent box on the Nagra and some custom gear attached to an Otari MTR 1/4" deck and using a bunch of BTX modules for TC and machine control. It was hairy but we did a lot of work with it, including at least one feature film. They went to all this trouble in order attract business for their REAL money makers--their Rank Cintel and their "online" CMX 340 edit systems. We production types were just the loss leader! philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted February 12, 2013 Report Share Posted February 12, 2013 FWIW, not necessarily apropos to anything of the above? ... But, here is a 2006 post, from Jeff W: Thank you so much for pointing to this thread back in 2006 (we had just started JWSOUND site). Everyone posted some really interesting and insightful stuff! It was a good read. I'm not saying that just because I was an active participant, it was the kind of personal discourse with historical references and anecdotes that this site has handled so well. I really enjoyed reading all those posts from all those years ago where we were talking about stuff that happened even longer ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Smith Posted February 12, 2013 Report Share Posted February 12, 2013 Thanks for the insight, pverrando! I think it would be awesome if a name could be put to the gear. Taking a wild guess here, but the gear might have belonged to Dennis Maitland. Would be about the right time frame (although I don't recall seeing this in Dennis's sound package). Maybe Jan McL. or Billy S.could fill us in? Sadly,I have lost contact with a lot of the Local 52 mixers I knew from the 70's and 80's... --Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.png.279748a58a2b862b7aa5f3b84126e232.png)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.