WTBS News

An eBay find and a new addition to the WTBS studio recreation.

Looking from a bygone era, this design of headphone was still commonly in use in BBC studios in the 1990s. In spite of better designs, in terms of comfort and quality, some presenters still preferred using them. 

These STC made headphones are branded with the 1980s era logo (a silver logo with italic font for the letters BBC, in slanted square boxes with the three "colour bars" under the boxes.)

They are wired in mono to a PO316 jack  (PO, Post Office,  jacks used on headphones the BBC had a rust-red coloured sleeve to denote mono wiring and a blue sleeve to denote stereo wiring).

Some cables on these headphones where the curly plastic covered version seen here, whilst others were made of straight braided cord.

The small sqaure box in-line with the cable is the audio limiter. It is out-of-period, being introduced in the 1990s. It is not yet decided whether to remove this and return them to the 1970s/80s period look. 

In many people's opinion they sounded dreadful!