Welllll now's yer chance! *Another* piece of recording history on the "auction block"

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Welllll now's yer chance! *Another* piece of recording history on the "auction block"

An early prototype Ampex MM-1000 on eBay.

This one came after the first prototype MM-1000 (the "AG-1000" made for Mirasound), but is clearly still pre-production.

$T2eC16VHJIIE9qTYKKd8BQzV4t8DWw~~60_57.webp
 
At the current bid of $1600, that works out to about 3 bucks a pound! :D

Lots of history and major artists affixed to that beast! Though I have my doubts that a simple calibration is all it needs. ;)

Cheers! :)
 
Pretty cool! And right up the street too! But I need another 2" machine like I need a hole in my head. Someone will have fun though.
 
Yup to all the above, but, yeah, fun to look at and ponder regarding the history and all, and yes i'm sure it would benefit from something more than a calibration but I betcha it does work. My Grandpa pooled his money with some buddies in high school and they got a basket-case Model T. They put it together and reportedly drove whatever it had left out of it, heheh. He told me a story once about a drive belt on the motor broke and one of the guys used one of his leather shoelaces to get them back on the road in a hurry and it worked. You couldn't likely get away with that on most vehicles on the road today. These old Ampex machines are like that...you can keep them going and with their relatively massive clunky components and open-frame relay logic, your toolkit can include toothpicks, rubber bands and a wad of aluminum foil for quick and effective fixes, LOL! No, it'd definitely get going-through if I had it, but i'm more than happy to window-shop today and hope that the bids climb to the level that the machine deserves for the work its done. Cool stuff tho'.
 
Yeah, as a piece of history or a piece for a museum it is right up there. I really hope that those bidding on it are not doing so with an eye to reducing it to its channel electronics for a quick profit, that would be sad. But I dont know about one of those as far as being practical in a home studio. No auto locator/remote really makes tracking tedious. I know there are remotes or at least they would be easy enough to build as Ampex transport logic is easy to deal with. Id be rewinding right off the take up reel all the time LOL.
 
I would be surprised if the bidders are bidding just for the electronics...440B electronics can frequently be had for under $100 apiece and if bids are already at $1600 its not really worth it. Headblock has some value of course, but, trust me, the market is pret-ty sllllllowwwwww for MM-1000 headblock assemblies.

Not practical in a home studio?? It works for me! :D

The cool thing is that the transport buttons are so huge they're easy to hit from the drumkit you have setup right next to the transport LOL! And the mode control toggles are within arm's-reach.

Seriously, I have a remote for mine but doubt if I'll ever need it/use it because my room is small enough that the control panel is never more than a step away from wherever I am in the room. :)

And, yes, it is a relatively simple-simple job to build a remote for any of these old Ampex machines. Super-simple relay logic.

And tape winding off the reel?? C'MON! The MM-1000 has this super-cool device on it called a tape-footage counter...its a roller that actuates a mechanical counter that indicates how many feet of tape have passed and it is accurate to +/-0.1%!!! Its so simple to use!!! When you are rewinding you watch the counter and when it gets close to zero...you press STOP. Its so cool!!! These crazy machines of antiquity...what wonders shall they reveal next???!?!? :D:D:D
 
Haha. How do you hear the drums over the machine? You know just thinking, it probably wouldnt be that big a design feat to get a contact closure out of that mechanical footage counter at "zero". Then reset to the portion you are working on and the simple remote with that contact available becomes a rudimentary RTZ function. might be enough. My studio is different with the tape machine(s) being in the machine room, and I run their remote/auto locator into the live room. Then I can sit at the drums and arm tracks, locate portions, even do auto punch ins and outs....
 
I've been watching this auction, and wow ... that's a cool deck. But doesn't look like a machine that was put together by Ampex. The guy says it was built by the studio ... so I'm not sure how it could be called 'prototype'!

Also, I don't think 'Volunteers' was recorded at TTG. The MM1000 on the back of the album cover is different as well.

EDIT:

Maybe it's this machine?:

http://launch.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/recordingsession/?tab=s

... which is weird because someone on that site writes that it was owned by the Grateful Dead.

Strange to me that there would be TWO custom jobs built in this manner, as opposed to the standard Ampex AG1000/MM1000 frame. The early ones would have been built by Ampex Special Products.

I'm skeptical regarding the history of the deck as well because some things don't add up. The electronics channels appear to be the 'B' versions, which were not introduced until 1969 ... yet some of records listed as recorded on the TTG 16-track were done in '68 ('Waiting for the Sun' for instance). Note the larger knobs -- the AG1000 from Mirasound has the 'A' version electronics with smaller knobs (w/ red tips on the repro knobs) ... the same ones as the AG350 and AG300.

Anything is possible ... but it seems funny to me.
 
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sold for around $3000 ... seems about right, all things considered! happy holidaze
 
lonewhitefly said:
I've been watching this auction, and wow ... that's a cool deck. But doesn't look like a machine that was put together by Ampex. The guy says it was built by the studio ... so I'm not sure how it could be called 'prototype'!

Also, I don't think 'Volunteers' was recorded at TTG. The MM1000 on the back of the album cover is different as well.

EDIT:

Maybe it's this machine?:

recordingsession : Ampex AG-1000 16 Track 2"

... which is weird because someone on that site writes that it was owned by the Grateful Dead.

Strange to me that there would be TWO custom jobs built in this manner, as opposed to the standard Ampex AG1000/MM1000 frame. The early ones would have been built by Ampex Special Products.

I'm skeptical regarding the history of the deck as well because some things don't add up. The electronics channels appear to be the 'B' versions, which were not introduced until 1969 ... yet some of records listed as recorded on the TTG 16-track were done in '68 ('Waiting for the Sun' for instance). Note the larger knobs -- the AG1000 from Mirasound has the 'A' version electronics with smaller knobs (w/ red tips on the repro knobs) ... the same ones as the AG350 and AG300.

Anything is possible ... but it seems funny to me.
Click to expand...

nope. That machine you linked is the third early prototypical machine of which i'm aware and different than the one in the auction. The Mirasound AG-1000 and the two early MM-1000's were all built on standard VR series chassis, though the AG-1000 transport surface was horizontal. The Dead used one in their mobile rig. You can't judge the 440 a/b electronics by the knobs because it wasn't uncommon for studios to replace the smaller red a knobs with the larger black b knobs. ALL the MM-1000's were more or less Special Products Division spawn. This is arguable speculation but I've discussed with a couple different folks that there was a surplus of VR-1000 parts, so much of the MM-1000 production run is based off of custom-shop VR-1000 chassis assemblies and other parts.
 
yes, always some mystery with decks like this I suppose. I did take a closer look at the two photos, and you're right: these decks do indeed appear to be different.

i still have to say that some of the info on the auction doesn't add up. perhaps the seller just put together whatever info he could find.
 
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