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Prepping Vintage Reel-To-Reel Tape Recorders For the TV Series THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
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Recently, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE required a room full of late 50's to early 60's reel-to reel tape recorders. In all, over 30 machines were serviced by us to ensure that they appeared operational.
Six, of the total of twelve machines prepped for the Prop Department.
Workstation.
One of the machines removed from it's case… ready to be serviced.
Details
Twelve "hero" machines were provided by the Prop Department, while the balance came from Set Dec. PROPOLOGY was assigned the task of prepping the Prop Department machines.
Given the late arrival of the machines from eBay, we had to turn them around in very short order. Each unit received a restorative cleaning to make it appear nearly new. More importantly, each had to have functioning transports and illuminated indicators—both necessary to give the appearance (if only superficially) of being operational.
After being cleaned and lubricated, any missing or broken parts were replaced with any we could remove from a couple of other "donor" machines we had set aside for this purpose.
The final step was to change-out the old, brittle or broken drive belts with new ones. This was done in order to restore operation or alternately, to simply ensure the reliability of the tape transport mechanism.
Twelve "hero" machines were provided by the Prop Department, while the balance came from Set Dec. PROPOLOGY was assigned the task of prepping the Prop Department machines.
Given the late arrival of the machines from eBay, we had to turn them around in very short order. Each unit received a restorative cleaning to make it appear nearly new. More importantly, each had to have functioning transports and illuminated indicators—both necessary to give the appearance (if only superficially) of being operational.
After being cleaned and lubricated, any missing or broken parts were replaced with any we could remove from a couple of other "donor" machines we had set aside for this purpose.
The final step was to change-out the old, brittle or broken drive belts with new ones. This was done in order to restore operation or alternately, to simply ensure the reliability of the tape transport mechanism.
It was really satisfying to have "hands-on" so many interesting vintage machines.
1 Comments
I just watched that episode and am so happy to see this blog post. I work with a program that helps Indigenous organizations to digitize their language and cultural heritage recordings. I was wondering what you did with these decks after the fact? It was so cool to see them all running.