{"id":9049,"date":"2026-08-14T13:56:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T11:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/?p=9049"},"modified":"2026-08-14T14:23:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:23:01","slug":"beocord-506-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/2026\/08\/14\/beocord-506-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Beocord 506 update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve spent some time this week reading an excellent textbook called &#8220;The Recording and Reproduction of Sound&#8221; written by Oliver Read. The second edition that I have was published in 1952.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In it, he has a chapter called &#8220;Magnetic (Tape and Wire) Recording where we get a close-up view of the playback \/ record head of a wire recorder, as shown below.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_02-1024x374.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9050\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_02-1024x374.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_02-300x110.png 300w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_02-768x280.png 768w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_02.png 1452w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This drawing of the head is almost identical to the Beocord 506 (seen below with and without its protective cover), which is good, because it taught me a lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"705\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_04-1-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9057\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_04-1-rotated.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_04-1-300x207.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_04-1-768x529.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The playback head on the Beocord 506 with and without a cover. Note that the direction of travel of the wire in this photo is from left to right. In the drawing above, it&#8217;s right to left, which is why the heads look like mirror images to each other.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I assumed that the head of the Beocord in the previous posting was shaped like a tape playback head. In other words, in my understanding, looking from above, it is shaped like a C, where the tape runs along the gap, as shown in the two (essentially identical) options below. The blue line represents the wire, travelling past the gap in the head.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"247\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_03-1-247x300.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9052\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_03-1-247x300.png 247w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_03-1-768x933.png 768w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_03-1.png 843w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 247px) 100vw, 247px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That textbook taught me that this is incorrect&#8230; The wire does not pass along the front of the gap as is shown above. It goes through the gap as shown in the figure below. Note that the text in red are my additions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"685\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_01-1024x685.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9053\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_01-1024x685.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_01-300x201.png 300w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_01-768x514.png 768w, https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wire_recorder_01.png 1445w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is very clever, since, once-upon-a-time, it would have been very difficult to saw a very narrow gap in the head. It was much easier to merely bend the poles (the ends of the C-shape) so that they were slightly misaligned (corresponding to the width of the gap that would have been there if they had done it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, looking back at the close-up photos of the head on the Beocord 506U, things make much more sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent some time this week reading an excellent textbook called &#8220;The Recording and Reproduction of Sound&#8221; written by Oliver Read. The second edition that I have was published in 1952. In it, he has a chapter called &#8220;Magnetic (Tape and Wire) Recording where we get a close-up view of the playback \/ record head [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[66,4,25,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analogue","category-audio","category-history","category-recordings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p48hIM-2lX","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9049"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9060,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9049\/revisions\/9060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonmeister.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}