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Nagra Tape recorders How many here actually have used them before digital.


JBond

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I don't know who made Swintek's but we always said Swintek was the Swedish word for loop it.

CrewC

Bill Swintek was an electronics genius from Sunnyvale who made his name making specialized wireless devices for law-enforcement and black ops people etc in the 1960s-70s.  (When I was at their shop I was shown some transmitters that I never saw anywhere else--larger than their regular models, all black.  They would smile and say "we don't make this, you never saw this, you can't buy this and we won't answer any questions about it".)  He got into making wireless mics for our sort of use in the 1970s because some large customers asked him to, and the US-made competition at the time was pretty lousy (Vega, HME).   I bought my original units from David A MacMillan ("The Right Stuff" etc) right after he finished "Shoot The Moon"  (one of the TX still had a label "Diane" on it, for Diane Keaton).  I bought some others from Swintek new, then took them all over the USA and overseas as well.  As I said, they needed a lot of care and feeding compared to modern wirelesses, but since I kept up with the maintenance they served me very well.  The TX were very small even by today's standards (slightly longer but thinner than a "2-AA" Lectro TX),  which was very handy--much smaller than the Vega 77 type TX, a contemporary.

 

philp

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Design wise the Swintek's were way ahead of their time. Compared to Vega's they were out standing. But radio work was so hard/bad/no range/crazy back then as compared to today it is hard to contemplate what we went through to get a good radio scene. Sometimes they would work great. Next time, maybe 10 fritzing feet of range. Somehow we made it work. Happy for todays tools. Hoping for even better tools tomorrow.

CrewC

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Design wise the Swintek's were way ahead of their time. Compared to Vega's they were out standing. But radio work was so hard/bad/no range/crazy back then as compared to today it is hard to contemplate what we went through to get a good radio scene. Sometimes they would work great. Next time, maybe 10 fritzing feet of range. Somehow we made it work. Happy for todays tools. Hoping for even better tools tomorrow.

CrewC

I recall frequently having to "walk" shots with the RX or an antenna just out of the shot, as the talent moved over a distance (esp in urban environments).  Also--wacko ad hoc multi antenna rigs to get one thru weird shots--like a box that could manually switch the antenna feed between two planted antennas between lines of dialog.  Happy times....

 

philp

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  • 7 months later...

Actually most of the Harvey Mods were performed by Harvey himself, in San Mateo CA.  Harvey was a friend of mine and he continued to do work on my gear right up to the time of his death.  He got trusted people like Vark and Dan Dugan set up to do the mods, but by that time DAT was starting and Harvey wasn't interested in the problems of that format.  For years Dan Dugan had what was left of Harvey's parts and would do service on the TCS machines--that's who I'd call if I wanted to fix mine.

 

philp

Hello,

Looking for any documentation of the Harvey Board X4S as a form of a usesr manual and  schemtics, I have acquired a IV-S with X4S modification and the seller noted that the X4S board is not working. Any information where I can find that ?

Many thanks in advance!

George

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