Ampex MM1100 Variable Speed

[dawsonaudio]

I've been investigating hooking up a variable speed function to my Ampex MM1100/16 track.

Mainly, I'd like to throttle the speed down a little lower than 15ips. 7ips had a little too much high frequency roll off so I'm looking for something in between.

Would it be possible to send a signal from one of my DAW ouputs into the Ampex Variable Speed plug on the back of my machine. It looks like there is a dummy plug connected. 9600 hz is the frequency that the deck is currently using. I read in the Ampex manual that connecting to pin 2 (hot) and pin 3 (common) of the Variable Speed socket, I could add vso.

I'd create a track in my daw, insert a signal generator and feed that to the ampex deck. I'd wire pin 2 and pin 3 of the xlr out from my daw accordingly and float the ground lug at the input of the deck/variable speed socket. Would this work?

Thanks for any advice here.

Nate

 

[radardoug]

The signal on the input is single ended and relative to ground. You need a good level signal.
I would suggest a function generator would be better, as it is square wave out , and made for the job.

 

[dawsonaudio]

I'll try that out instead. Thanks for the advice.

Any recommendations on a entry level function generator? I've only ever used my DAW to generate tones for tape alignment, testing, etc...