Sony AG-C7 BetaStack

FORMAT: Betamax DATE: 1981 PRICE: £150 [1994: £276] xxcm

Sony's SL-C7 recorder was clearly intended to put VHS in its place by offering more sophisticated features, but VHS could still boast longer tapes (three hours rather than two-and-a-half) and hence longer and more economical recordings. To redress the balance, Sony brought out the staggeringly bizarre Betastack tape changer, which allowed you to record or play back four tapes in a row - even while the machine was unattended - giving over 13 hours of (almost) continuous recording.

The AG-7 clips onto a bracket which must be screwed onto the top of the C7, and covers the cassette lid and all the operating buttons like the Alien face-hugger. Secondary buttons are provided on the Betastack, so that you can still use the machine normally. With one tape in the machine, three more can be stacked up in the AG-7's loading tray, and at the end of each tape (or optionally at the end of each recording, if multiple programs are being recorded), the current tape is ejected, another inserted, and the playback or recording is continued on the new tape.

Watching the AG-7 work is hilarious. Whirring motors, clattering tapes and the pinging of springs accompany every operation, and the whole device raises itself into the air as it pushes the cassette lid down, like a holiday-maker trying to force his suitcase shut. Ejected tapes are spat out into the receiving tray at some speed, and if there are already three in this tray, ejecting the fourth knocks the top tape onto the floor. Amazingly, despite the electronic connection between the AG-7 and the recorder, all the control operations are performed by mechanical fingers which press the C7's normal operating buttons!

Despite being well engineered in itself, the AG-7 was clearly an afterthought. It needs a separate mains power supply, and a wire linking it to the camera socket on the front of the VCR, so the full system is surrounded by a tangle of cables. It will only work with a C7 (In fact the C7 had to be modified to put out the correct signals on the camera socket, so it won't work with C7's which were made before this revision), but despite this it doesn't match the C7's colour - it was apparently originally designed to go with models which were only sold in Japan and the US.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the AG-7 didn't sell in any significant numbers, and within a couple of years Sony were trying to get rid of them for £25 each [1994: £46]. As far as I can see, the only people who would ever have needed one would have been Betamax tape pirates, bulk-copying tapes...

Betastacks seem to be rare today, and are highly prized by collectors and Betamax fans. I never expected to find one; I came across it in a shop which had had it in stock since they were first on sale - so despite being 13 years old it was bought new! It is now one of the gems of our collection, having the right combination of rarity, obsolescence and sheer weirdness.

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