A Teaching Moment

Here in Studio 6B is Ed McMahon with an RCA TK41 behind him. Notice the angled box addition. It’s on top, front of the camera just in front of the viewfinder and above the lens turret. Know what that is?

It’s quite an ingenious sound baffle. Most likely a creation of the late Fred Himelfarb, NBC and RCA’s TK41 guru, the hollow box sits atop the high voltage door and the main cooling fan. At the network level, any camera has to be ready for use in any position, including stage crane mounting. You’ll remember, most of the sound in these days was picked up by boom mics, and when the boom is over a camera, or the crane camera gets close to the boom mic, it hears sounds that you won’t necessarily hear if you are at floor level. This sheet metal creation was placed on a lot of the NBC NY cameras and deflects the fan exhaust and sound back away from the boom mics. Now you know what those little gizmos are.

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