The 2026 Ampex OldTimers Picnic and Zoom is on the server (“in the can” is a film term) and waiting for editing… so we can post what happened to and what’s happening with equipment and artifacts in the former Ampex Museum of Magnetic Recording. You’ll hear from Peter Hammar the Curator of the museum, and Becky Gordon, the Stanford Special Collection archivist who has been a key organizer of triaging and inventorying what’s been held in warehouses for decades. You’ll also hear from the Ampexers who attended in person and on Zoom. Watch this space for updates.
Ampex Picnic and Zoom Saturday, September 19, 2026: Ampex Museum of Magnetic Recording: Unseen for decades, what happened in mid-2026? Stanford University Archivist Rebecca Gordon will be bringing artifacts and photos to help tell the story of what happened this year with the Museum’s long-stored hardware, and Curator Pete Hammar will provide the history of the Museum and his reaction to seeing history uncrated. See Museum items not seen since the mid 1980s. Learn what happened then, and in 2026 Ampexers and family members: 5 PM tomorrow—Friday Sept. 18, 2026—is the deadline to get tickets to Saturday’s Ampex OldTimers Picnic and Zoom. Ampex and Ampex Data Systems employees and family members and contractors can register for e-mails at AmpexOldTimers.org so you get the link for tickets.
There’s a lot of Ampex equipment in the VideoPark Collection, the former TransferLab at VideoPark. That includes three Ampex VR-1200 Quad VTRs, including a Merlin Ultrafurbed deck with NEC NTC-10 TBC, a collection of Mark X heads, manuals, and test tapes, an MM-1200 16 rack 2″ audio recorder, Ampex 440 4-track and 2-track decks and a mono 351 in factory housing. The VideoPark Collection includes Broadcast Video, Audio and Radio equipment. Click here to see the collection: