this is a long story made short, but Ray Anderson, who runs Grooves records at Market and Octavia in San Francisco has a bunch of rare shows of San Francisco bands, like It’s A beautiful day, Kaleidoscope, etc, that were never recorded by anybody else, because back in the 60’s Ray ran a lot of the light shows at the dance halls and nobody thought to record much of it, at least on video
the problem is that the equipment he used to record the video for these shows was among the first domestic video machines ever made available in the USA starting in 1965. The tapes are still in pretty good condition but at this late date it is so difficult to find anyone who knows about the machines, much less have any of the models, that Sony Corporation itself couldn’t even help
these early video machines are documented on the Museum of Early Consumer Electonics. Ray bought one of the first models, and there were 4 or 5 the same year. Ray had this one pictured, without the clock and without the little pop up screen
the Sony CV-2000 1/2 inch reel to reel video recorder, black and white…the tapes themselves were 30 bucks a piece in 1966, very expensive for that time..The problem isn’t the tapes…the problem is that there’s nothing to play them on accurately anymore
so I’m just making this post in the hope that some day, somebody will see this who knows more about it, because so far, whatever Ray has done to try and transfer it to dvd from the originals, there is a persistent tracking problem described in an earlier post
https://www.bluoz.com/blog/index.php?/archives/929-Its-A-Beautiful-Day-1969-video-sneak-preview.html
the video on youtube shows what kind of tracking problem there is. Nobody has been able to solve it so far, not even Sony itself, since those original models are looong gone, and only a few are known to survive
if it is solved some day, a bunch of tapes can be transferred and put online and a real piece of San Francisco history can finally be shown. Also, Ray experimented with digital tapes. Yes there were digital reel to reel tapes in the 60’s and some of it came out OK and some audio came out better, which is a whole different problem
email me at auweia1@gmail.com or post here if you think you can help with any of this, or stop in at Grooves records (market and octavia) in the afternoon and talk to Ray himself. If you know what you’re talking about regarding these early tape machines, he’ll definitely talk up a storm with you