Hey Kev.....what do you know about OPTRO?

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2003 2:56 am

Kev,..or anyone…
What do you know about ‘OPTRO’ ?
No , not opto-coupling or anything like that but OPTRO the brand of tape macines and mixers from Melbourne Australia apparently built in the sixties? Any historical facts? Who built/designed them?Cheers. :c:

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2003 2:58 pm

Optro

... as a brand name. :confused: :confused:

Nothing goes off in my head. I'm not at work this and next week week but I will be in on Monday and so I will ask about.

They made Tape Machines !!!!??? ... They must have had some size to them as tape decks aren't that easy... or are we just talking cassette ?

Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2003 5:16 am

Optro were the forerunner to Editron or Sontron as they were known.Graham Thirkel was the designer and was (still is) held in high regard.There are many studios still running editron synchronizers out there.These days Sontron imports Harrison film mixing consoles and Jensen xformers amongst other things.

Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2003 12:50 pm

I type that word in Google

it showed that ATA in Australia has one of those name brand boards... could check with them

SI

Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2003 12:52 pm

actually it was a 2" tape with 8 or 16 track and i think a 1/2" tape machine

SI

Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2003 2:26 pm

Quote:

Originally posted by George Goerss:
Optro were the forerunner to Editron ...... Graham Thirkel was the designer and was (still is) held in high regard......and Jensen xformers amongst other things.

Now Editron I have heard of. And Graham (Thirkell) is just up the road from me in Huntingdale. Mostly Acoustic stuff these days.
http://www.acoustisearch.com/13.htm
His company designed some Acoustic modifications for a couple of our control and edit rooms at CH7.

... and he still imports Jensen trafos ... very expensive.

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2003 4:56 am

I once took apart an old OPTRO console.It was 20:8:2 with 16 separate monitor inputs.
All hard wired to cards mounted at the back.It was the size of two sofas , it was huge.

I’m not excactly sure when it was built. Late sixties/early seventies. It certainly had its own sound….
A very defined top-mid register. Not airy at all. More yellow than white up top.

I’ve seen at least two OPTRO 2” reel to reel 16 track machines.
Nicely built stuff. Very Happy

Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:32 pm

In the mid '80 at the now and long since gone Future Studios in Chicago we had an Optro 1000 2" 24track with 2 interchangeable head stacks: 24 and 16 track. We also had a 1/2" 2 track. Once we got them running they they sounded great but since the 24 track was actually a prototype that someone had appearently subtly sabotaged before we obtained it, it broke down quite regularly untill I figured out that solenoid DC was being applied to audio circuits during certain functions thereby blowing tantalum caps and transistors etc. I must have spent 100's of hours working on that thing. Ah, those were the days! I wonder where my old freind is now? I could write a book on that thing (if I could write: )
I think I do still have one of Graham's notebooks we got with it.

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