[BC] Comparing the audio in the Big 50's

[Dana Puopolo]

I worked on all three of these and a BTA 50G also. I preferred the sound of
the Continental - especially after we replaced the input transformer with a
diff in. I also had an original MW-50 that was converted to a C by Harris. It
was licensed as an alternate main with the Continental at 850 in Boston, but I
though it sounded too "IM ey".  Both rigs were loud as hell. This MW 50 also
had the 100 kW power supply that was over twice as big as the stock one. 

The 50H I worked on was at 1510 in Boston. It was one of three or 4 that had
the oversized power supply  (WNBC also had one of these). It had two tube
exciters when I worked with it - later Grady converted it to the solid state
exciter. That rig actually was observed to put out 75 kilowatts at 100% tone
modulation before the wall mounted breaker blew.Eventually it became an Aux to
an MW-50 and then left the building when the MW 50 became an aux to a Nautel.
IIRC, Grady donated some of the 50H parts to the Radio Caroline museum/ship.

The 50G was at 990 in Providence. It ran well, (and the station had a 5.1
share while running that rig) though the driver tubes were undersized and the
807's in the drive regulator were mounted horizontally and their grids would
sag into the filaments (I mounted it vertically to fix this). I had two drive
regulator assemblies and always wanted to see if they could have been adapted
to run as OTL audio amplifiers (the outputs were cathode followers - three 807
tubes in parallel). I'll bet they would have worked. This rig came to its end
one day when the blower breaker popped and someone had shorted out the
pressure switches - so the rig just kept running until it died. This was well
after my tenure as CE had ended - I never would have done such a thing.
Fortunately it did not catch fire. Grady and I actually got it running again
at 50 KW but it was never reliable again, so it was replaced with a Nautel
(also now in terrible condition).

From: "Tim Sawyer" <tzsawyer at tzsawyer.com>

Doherty? Oh they're nice, like the 50kW Continental 317C2? Piece of cake  -
for real fun try something like the old 50KW RCA 50H - Ampliphase -- with
the tube exciter not the later version with the solid-state exciter.
Ampliphase=Amplifuzz.  The Continental 317C2 was a joy, a pleasure to
maintain after the RCA Ampliphase or the even the (shutter) crash and burn
original Harris MW-50.