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what's this piece of equipment

It was a portable remote location board and turntable system made by Sparta. That's all I remember it as. I remember there being a system like this at the community college I went to school at.
 
Right. I remember it from the community college I went to. At that time, it was in a little studio where we read news. That little studio looked into the main studio.

I guess I'm gonna have to look through some old Broadcasting magazines to find my answer. I've either seen an ad for this thing, or I saw a brochure for it. Don't know which.

thanks.
 
It certainly looks like a remote board with turntables made by Sparta. I have, and still use, a remote board similar to this one although tit has only two pots, one of which can be used for an auxilary input from an audio recorder or something similar.
 
Mike said:
This thing had a very nice name to it when it was new. Nowadays, people have names that should be labeled as opinions.

My mind is drawing a blank as to the name. All I know it was made by Sparta (before Cetec go them).

http://www.wjma.radiohistory.net/WJMA photos/WJMA places/pages/page_26.html

thanks.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying this board had a commercial model name or a common industry nickname, or what? We had one at my college station (c. 1978-9) for use at remotes. We called it "the Sparta board," as in: "carry the Sparta board over to the quad for the live remote this afternoon." We never called it anything else.
 
We had the exact same Sparta board at WADR Remsen (Utica-Rome, NY). We even had the Tapecaster recorder shown in another picture. Wow, takes me back. Wonder what happened to it. It was a good piece of equipment for production, especially for a small station.
 
If I'm not mistaken, WAKQ-FM in Russellville, KY used that for a production board and a live board. This was around 1977. The station was automated with reel to reels but the morning show was live. This board was used for the live show and then for production once the automation took over. One day a production guy flipped the wrong switch and cut a few spots live on the air.
 
Mike said:
Right. I remember it from the community college I went to. At that time, it was in a little studio where we read news. That little studio looked into the main studio.

I guess I'm gonna have to look through some old Broadcasting magazines to find my answer. I've either seen an ad for this thing, or I saw a brochure for it. Don't know which.

thanks.
Click to expand...

The board was also available separately as the A-10, either mono or stereo. It had the basic features needed to run a station. I had several of those at stations in South America and they ran really well... the carbon pots had to be replaced perhaps every 6 months when they wore out, but otherwise it was perfectly adequate for a budget-dependent operation. Add some equally cheap Tapecasters, a pair of Rek-o-Kuts and you were on the air.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com...R/1964-03-30-BC-0112.pdf#search="sparta a-10" gives you reference to the unit from a convention listing.
 
Sparta Remote Turntable Console was the name I remember too.

Back in the early 1980s, someone was selling one because he had purchased it to use at weddings and such. Then he found out how heavy it was. Not exactly something one person can easily pop in the trunk and take to an event.

Well, I ended up with it. It has a Sparta AS-30B console with five pots and two Sparta turntables.
I used it on-air at my Part 15 AM station in the 1990s and up until around 2004.

These days it's part of the production room, and still working! It no longer has the legs, so it is installed on part of the U-shaped studio counter.
 
Gates also made a version of this for remotes back in the days when you trucked out the records to a remote and did it all. The Gates unit only had one mike input so the capabilities were somewhat limited. One station I worked for aded a shure mike mixer on the side of more capabilities.

The basic thing a I also remember abotu the Gates unit is that it was HEAVY!
 
Hi,

Thanks for the input. I remember a name similar to the name "Sparta-matic" used for the cart machines. (Or, have I forgotten that, too?)

I've been checking the magazines on the American Radio History website and so far have come up empty.

Going back forty years I remember running across an ad (or was it an equiopment catalog?) for this unit and it displayed the name that I remembered from earlier.

Oh well, thanks to everybody that wrote in.
 
Mike said:
Thanks for the input. I remember a name similar to the name "Sparta-matic" used for the cart machines. (Or, have I forgotten that, too?)

I've been checking the magazines on the American Radio History website and so far have come up empty.
Click to expand...

Sparta-Matic cart machines were widely advertised. Check that site, but in the Broadcast Engineering Magazine search like this:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com...e&zoom_cat[]=1&zoom_cat[]=2&zoom_per_page=100

Also, the site will have about 20 issues of Broadcast Programming & Production available in a few days, and there are numerous ads for the Sparta cart machines there.

There is also a Sparta Century cart machine on eBay right now at http://www.ebay.com/itm/SPARTA-CENT...657?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item41612eab21
 
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