Beechwoods' Den - June 2011. The Technics Edition.

[jason]

Very nice system, those rogers look great..

[DSJR]

Compared with analogue reel to reel the reel to reel is way more robust than VHS. Try playing a 30 year VHS recording back and compare it with a 30 year old reel. No contest!

Unless the tapes are those (certain Ampex?) which shed their oxide over time due to the adhesives breaking down. So many analogue masters from the 70's and 80's all but lost because of this. I know they can be played once after baking, but don't know if they can be ever baked and played again...

[Lodgesound]

Once baked I can confirm that if stored properly (ie. in bone dry conditions) that the tapes tend to play almost perfectly with virtually no shedding at all.

The best tapes available today are old stocks of BASF 911, AGFA PEM 468 and almost anything EMITAPE from the 1970's. The value of quarter inch tape stock in good condition is starting to go through the roof now.

RMG actually bought the entire BASF plant and moved it to Holland and actually make the same tape under their own banner. A 10.5 inch reel of RMG 911 retails at around 40 - 55 pounds.

[Beechwoods]

Yep, baked tapes do keep. And yep, Ampex tapes from the late 70's and early 80's are notorious for sticky shed. They are the only tapes that have done this though in my own personal experience. I have tapes from the late 60's that still sound great..., and despite much playing.

[DSJR]

I liked the BASF Pro tape too, but gave all my tapes away when I sold my last Revox some time ago now.

[Lodgesound]

I think a lot of people either forget or did'nt realise that open reel machines were lined up to suit a specific REEL and not just TYPE of tape when recordings were done - even on the same brand of tape the variation in settings for bias and eq were always quite surprising.

On studio machines all of the adjustments were easily accessible so rapid line up by an engineer was easily possible. Later generations of open reel machines actually calibrated themselves to a tape via a processor controlled sequence.

All proper recordings should be preceeded by 30 second sections of 1 KHz tone, 10 KHz tone and 100 Hz tone to enable level, azimuth and eq to be set on the replay machine along with the relevant Dolby signals if noise reduction is being used. This enables rapid and completely faithful calibration of the replay machine to the recording on the tape.

[DSJR]

Our master copies had five tones (from memory) at the beginning, followed by some leader before the music started.

[Rare Bird]

I only use Racal-Zonal on the Ferrographs great tape..