At 10/4/2007 08:50 AM, Karl Jackson wrote:
I'm writing to inquire about recording equipment used in 1950s era radio broadcasts. I work with the United States Marine Band, which will be celebrating its 210th anniversary next year. As part of our concert series, we will be transporting one of our "Dream Hour" radio broadcasts to the concert stage, complete with microphones, equipment, and announcer. We would like to replicate the gear as accurately as possibly. I've posted photographs of a broadcast here: http://picasaweb.google.com/karl.j.jackson/HistoricUSMBPictures?authkey=NAbG I8uh8RE, and am hoping that you all can help to identify and or locate some of the equipment, including microphones and mixer/transmitter. My best guesses for microphones is that they are either RCA 50-A or Western Electric 618A. I have no idea what the contraption in front of the broadcast engineer is.
Are you sure these pictures were taken in the 1950s? The equipment makes it look more like early 1930's. Any later than that, WOL would probably have been using ribbon microphones (probably some version of an RCA 44) for a music remote.
The device in front of the engineer is the microphone mixer. It looks like a Western Electric mixer, but I'm not sure about the model number. The visible connections on the right side are the big round connector from a power supply (this would have been in the era of vaccuum tubes), and the telephone wires that connected the broadcast back to the WOL studios. There's a telephone handset next to his right hand, which he probably used for "talkback" to the station's control room. It appears that the engineer has placed his ashtray with a couple of cigars on top of the mixer.
The two pictures of the whole band look like the were taken in two different sessions. Notice that the conductor is on the left on one picture and on the right in the the other, and the musicians are all seated facing him in both. It's not a flipped negative, because the "USMC" on the background is correct in both pictures.
John Ross