35mm magnetic tape player/recorder (8-track Sondor)

[Nicolas Pollacchi]

Hi all,

I bought this Sondor magnetic audio player (see attached photo), but I can't figure out the exact model or configuration (which might be a custom version). Could any of you shed some light on this for me?
All the circuit boards are labeled with the Sondor brand name.
The playback heads are under the orange cover, and it looks like the recording heads are in the small black block just above it.
There are 8 playback and recording heads but only 6 VU meters.
Do you have any idea what model this is?
Does anyone have any documentation on this unit?

Thanks in advance for your help Sondor 35mm magnetic reader-recorder.jpg

[Jim Cassedy]

It's been a very long time since I've worked anywhere that had a magnetic film recorder.
The machine we had could be 'locked' to synchronize with other 35mm equipment using
selsyn motors, or we could lock it to 1in video tape using a time code. We rarely used more
than 4 of the magnetic tracks for audio. We used tracks 1 thru 4 for audio, and track six for
the time code. We left track 5 blank, as a 'guard track' to lessen the possibility of the time
code signal bleeding into one of the audio tracks, if head alignment was slightly off on any
of the magnetic recorder/players. Once or twice though, track 5 was used as a 'slop' or
cue track for various purposes. I don't know if this arrangement was standard throughout
the industry, but it's how we did things at the production house I was working in at the time.