Early Solid-State Gates Audio Mixers

View Comments

• Gates was a spinoff of Motorola like all the other electronics companies in Quincy, Illinois. They were primarily famous for a transmitter, the BC-1 series that earned them the semi-affectionate sobriquet of "Quincy Tin Works". It was called that because to meet a Railroad Express shipping weight class they used one gauge lighter sheet steel than was really called for. The also shipped the power and mod transformers separately and the engineer had to put them in, a simple but heavy task.

  When I repped a line of guitars Quincy had five music stores, all on the same street and three on the same block. Like the electronics plants, they all stemmed from disgruntled former employees who would leave and start their own store, meaning a town big enough to support one store had five, none of whom made any money.

  Gates was bought out by Harris, who are still there, but Quincy remains a bizarre microcosm of what happens when a few wealthy families control a small town.

• "The Gem City" was in fact as important to the history of electronics as was what is now Silicon Valley. Motorola had a huge plant there that made an enormous quantity of stuff, but by the mid-50s had been assigned mostly to consumer lines, which were high volume and low unit margin. When the last of Bill Lear's contemporaries on the Motorola board died, Mother M spun it all off to Matsushita. They closed it within six months or so.

  Remember the Quasar "Works-In-A-Drawer" TV set? "Quasar" was an acronym, for "QUincy Assembly Service Advanced Receiver" , and became a brand name after Motorola's licensed use of their name ceased on the products Matsushita bought.

• The Gates Executive and its sisters....also known by some as the "snow plows."
  These were the ultimate in on-air boards in the mid 60's through the early 70's.
  Save for the mic preamps, they were essentially passive mixers with an output amplifier. They provided incredible switching capacity, the ladies who built these things had to be soldering iron pros! The biggest problem with the boards were the early germanium transistors used in the preamps and summing circuits. You could call the audio clean but brittle. Back then stations were still on tube transmitters, primitive by todays standards audio processing and most ran their signals down equalized phone lines to the transmitter so audio quality was important but not obsessive.

  I put a station on the air that used and Executive and my college stations had Presidents. I had a working Executive in my garage for about 10 years...great TV prop. The ergonomic aspect of the board was those beautiful large knobs that controlled either Shallco or Daven attenuators. They were about the size of a nubile coed's mammary apparatus and felt great to the touch.

• Need gates diplomat schematics really bad

• I'm looking for a diplomat console or an executive console. For internet radio.

  • Did you find what you are looking for back in October? I have an Executive that's in really nice shape.

• Looking for a Harris executive console

• Looking for a Harris "Diplomat" or "Ambassador" radio control board.A board with the big pots.For display purpose only......does not have to be in great shape.Anyone have thoughts about where I might find one for sale ?

  • I have a real pretty Diplomat works but needs some work
    extra nice shape very nice for display call 845 386 1000.
    I'm an hour from NYC, you gotta pick it up.
    $850 or trade.
    Comes with extra power supply
    Also have a pretty clean Gates Producer works $200
    And 2 Tapecaster cart machines one play back $35 and one record and play back $55.

• Years later (through the 1980s), Harris would produce the 'Micro Mac' console - a very early digitally controlled analog console. A technology and design too far ahead of it's time; it failed commercially. I often wonder how many were sold and if anybody on this site has any further details.
  TomC

• Looking for a diplomat wiring schematic.
  Thank you

• Looking for the Gates Dynamote 70 Schematic....Does anyone have one?