Sorensen Sez…First Audio Job
Jim Sorensen tells about his first audio job and what it was like back-in-those days.
One of my favorite TV shows was “All Creatures Great and Small” which was a PBS drama series about James Herriot, a Yorkshire, England veterinarian. You could get a feel for a real veterinary practice because the producers filmed in Yorkshire and used real animals in real situations. If you saw the actor who played Herriot with his arm up to the armpit inside a cow turning a calf for birth and saw a real calf born – you knew it was real.
For some reason this show always reminds me of my first job in the audio business. It was at a radio station wiring jack strips and racks for a four-track recording studio they were building. This was a big deal! It was Multi-track! I think this job was designed to weed out those who seriously wanted to be involved with audio and broadcasting from those who only thought they did. You learned how to solder, though. And how to work in some of the most gosh-awful positions anyone could have thought up.
Wiring was different back then.
In those days it was common to use both sides of the rack. It was common to use pads to isolate equipment and calibrate levels, and a rack strip on the back rails with pads between screw terminal strips. Same with the ubiquitous 111-C coil (usually stolen from the telephone company) which was used for matching, level adjustment, de-coupling (with a cap in the middle) and hybrid work in pairs. Remember, impedance matching was the rule!
Now-a-days many things connect using pre-made cable assemblies. In those days we built racks using point-to- point, soldered-in and laced wiring. This meant that you spent a lot of time rack building with your arm(s) in a full rack feeling around for things you could not always see. Just like Jim Herriot in his favorite cow.
The use of tubes in equipment (simply because they hadn’t gotten around to creating the transistor yet) made it even more entertaining. The combination of hot tubes and high voltages; sharp solder joints on terminals like the “Christmas Tree Block” (which are still available and in use); the razor edges of sheet metal rack parts (laboriously sharpened by some psychopath at the rack company who is still laughing about it); and positional numbness in various limbs made a real man out of you.
A burnt, scarred, achy, man to be sure – but a real man! It’s a good thing chicks dig scars.