[78-L] NBC tones

[David Lennick]

You may have helped date this recording to a degree. I have no exact dates on 
any of these, but I had 1931 noted on the tape box. The matrix number on this 
is JGB 446-1, recorded off air by Byers Studios. A higher matrix # is 683-1 and 
this contains a Quaker State commercial, announcing a contest with a May 
deadline, so that could be spring of 1932. These are all discs that Jim 
Hadfield obtained from that defunct music museum and which I'm finally digitizing.

dl

On 1/16/2013 11:18 PM, Michael Shoshani wrote:
> On 01/16/2013 10:04 PM, David Lennick wrote:
>> Just heard C-A-F as the NBC chimes in a WEAF aircheck, probably 1931. We've
>> talked about this in the past..what other pitches were used aside from G-E-C?
>
> That's pretty much it. NBC used several models of Deagan dinner chimes
> until they installed the Rangertone machine in 1932; the three-note
> chimes that came about in late 1931 were originally played on the No. 20
> chime, where the notes were C-A-F.  However, Deagan literature and music
> books called the chime plates G, C, E, G, and C if there was a fifth
> plate, regardless of the actual physical key of the chimes themselves.
> They were always pitched in A=435Hz, btw, not A=440.
>
> The smaller tubular chimes used for the seven notes weren't used for
> three, as a general rule; however, small sets of very heavy
> wooden-resonator chimes were built with these same G-E-C plates mounted
> in that order, for remotes where the announcer may not have had a button
> for the Rangertones on location. Bill Harris and I both have a set of
> these; his has an NBC Engineering Department property tag.
>
> I go into perhaps obsessive detail on my site, to which I've actually
> accumulated a bunch of research material I'm slowly adding.  For the
> Deagan chimes in general, see http://www.nbcchimes.info/deagan.php . For
> early NBC chimes, see http://www.nbcchimes.info/nbcorigin.php .
>
> What's the exact date of your aircheck, do you know? The earliest
> recording of three notes is from November 3, 1931, via Elizabeth McLeod.
>
> MS
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