In a message dated 8/9/2005 5:01:49 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: Ah.....Gates. We had a couple of their cartridge players in one station I worked at in the 70s. Useless things. dl At one time in the late '70s I had two 16" Gates turntables and 3 Viking cartridge players (playback only) that I rescued from the storage bin at KGIL in Los Angeles. I had to build "cabinets" for the turntables, using old discarded hollow doors with legs screwed into the corners. Rickety as all get-out but it did the trick. When I moved into my current house there was no room for them (and the missus thought they were ugly - she was right!) so when resistors started falling on the floor, I gave them away. The Vikings were apparently not meant to be mounted in a studio with a microphone in it because every time they were engaged they made a loud "ker-chunk" sound when starting and another loud noise when cueing up. Must have been just for remote usage or to be operated by an engineer. I don't miss recording commercials on 4-track cartridges at all - how many hours have I spent watching for stop splices to go by! Memory: the wacky KGIL morning man Dick Whittington had us thread up tape loops on a pair of vertically mounted Ampex 350s which he used as a gerry-rigged tape delay when airing phone calls (I don't which were more loopy, the machines or the callers...). One machine was set to record and the other was set to play back, about 5 seconds later. Sometimes the "good ol' days" weren't that good. Radio equipment is miles better than it was 25-30 years ago, though programming is inversely proportionately worse. Cary Ginell Origin Jazz Library www.originjazz.com