OT: wire recorders - skip if no interest

Sorry for the OT; this bears on classic restoration, albeit broadly. Toth, the head in a wire recorder is fairly low impedance. There were a couple of precompensation schemes used to boost the low end, somewhat like the curve applied to phonograph recordings, but nowhere near as severe as records. Transfer the wire to a more modern medium first, then 'play' with it. I have three machines here, a Brush and two Webcors, one of which has been modified for handling damaged or abused wire. I don't use the old electronics in them anymore, though the Webcors work fine. You can just hook the head leads up to a decent stereo with a 'Tape Head' or 'Tape In' facility. Then it might be necessary to apply EQ to the signal. You can of course hook up to your computer for recording to the HD - I would suggest the Microphone input for best S/N ratio. Then you can massage the program on the wire in your favorite Audio Workstation program. ALL THAT BEING SAID: it is more important, IMHO, to handle the wire safely - you never know what could be on it. I rescued the Brush Soundmirror at a ham swapmeet for $5. It had two spools of wire in the lid. One was a bunch of poorly recorded, often unintelligible 'family' stuff and radio programs. On the other, however, was a well-made recording (off radio) of a speech that Pres. Truman gave to the NAACP conference in 1950. It turns out that there was no record made of the speech itself, only that he had been there and given it. I transfered the speech to CD via ProTools, then sent the wire and a copy of the CD to the Library of Congress, and got back a nice letter and a commendation certificate from them. SO: Before loading wire on the old deck, give it a nice lube and run it in all modes for a while. [DO NOT lube the wire!!] The Webcors all used large rubber-rimmed drive pucks and many times the machine was left in "play" with the power off for decades, causing dents that need to be worked out. Especially make sure that the take-up torque is gentle and even, and that the hold-back brakes are still working. Wire moves pretty fast and has considerable rotational inertia - once wire 'gets away from you' (imagine stainless steel fishing line!) it nearly always needs to be cut and spliced and cleaned... you end up with silver clumps of hoplessly tangled knots everywhere. And you 'splice' wire by tying it in tiny knots - ugly but true... If you have any other issues or troubles with the machine, let me know off-list and we can sort it out. If the machine is not capable of handling the wire safely anymore, you can always send me your spools and I'll transfer them for you. I now return you to your currently-running Cctalk, already in progress. ;} Cheers John