[Wire recorders?] I got my hands on two very old (tube type) wire recorder/players that say they are "Mohawk Message Repeaters". One works and one doesn't, and my sister fixed the working one. I have no clue how old they are or anything about them, but we have two cartridges for them. They were installed in an elevator and used to play "Please stand clear of the door" when the doors opened. I'm playing with the non-working one to see if I can fix it, it appears as though the amplifier or read head is damaged. The tubes are still good, I already checked that. But I don't have lots of time to spend on it. I should note, though, that the working machine was fixed by my sister, and it's her first piece of obsolete consumer electronic equipment she repaired. (Even if it was a simple belt-swap). I was so proud. ^_^ -------

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 Penna2(a)aol.com wrote: [snippage] Yes, indeed, but from the 30s until tape took hold in the 50s, it was, apart from record-cutting machines, the only game in town. I have several wire recorders, used in my audio restoral and recovery efforts. Apart mainly by the big commercial producers of wire product back then, the accepted (ugly!) way is to tie the smallest, simplest knot in the wire that you can. If it has become brittle in that spot you may have to snip some. I have tried various glue combinations with poor results. Make the knot *small* or it will hang in the head groove and make a bigger mess. The last machine I found at a Ham Swapmeet had a spool with a recorded speech by President Truman to the NAACP in 1950; it turned out to be the only complete record of a very historic event, and the transcript and a restored CD of it, as well as the original wire, was donated to the Library of Congress. ALL of this is a bit off-topic for the classiccmp list, so please feel free to write me off-list for more info, help, repair parts, etc. Cheers John