Ok, Ok, so this is just an excuse for me to share some of the officially released (rather than enthusiast recorded) reel to reel tapes I have. They aren't that common, so it may be interesting to some of you, and it'd certainly be great to hear from anyone who has their own factory duplicated reel to reel tapes. Please, take some pictures and post them here if you have any!

All mine so far are 4-Track Stereo. That means you get 2 stereo tracks on one side of the tape and 2 on the other, corresponding usually to each side of the vinyl release. There are 2-Track Stereo official releases - the signal recorded across the full-width of the tape, in one direction only, and 2-Track Mono - bi-directional play, but a mono instead of stereo signal.

Interesting variants of the standard are 2 Track 'Staggered Head' tapes designed to be played on machines that had two separate heads for the left and right channels, the heads being separated from each other. I've seen some jazz releases in this format from the early sixties. Played back on conventional two-track stereo heads there will be a playback delay between the left and right channels. These tapes aren't always clearly labelled so be careful!

There are also the later Quadraphonic (Q4) tapes. These utilised 4 Tracks in one direction on the tape. Quad reel to reel tape is considered the highest fidelity and most 'discrete' of all the Quad formats. It ran at twice the speed and had an obviously higher dynamic range vs 8-Track. Vinyl formats relied upon carrier signals in the 30khz band, or matrixed phase tricks relying upon carefully set up decoders to get a decent result. Q4 just needed a 4-Track quad reel to reel player and a quad amplifier.

By the late 60's most reel to reel releases were in 4-Track stereo, and ran at the higher 7½ inch-per-second speed. As the decade turned, most releases moved to 3¾ ips - an attempt to save costs is my guess. 7½ ips is great sounding. 3¾ ips is respectable, but when you've heard some nice high-speed releases, you wish they were all like that.

It's useful to know though, whatever the playback speed, how the tapes were duplicated. The best way to explain this is by a quote from a thread on Audiokarma in 2007:

Back in the day, I used to work for GRT (Blue Label Tape division of Chess/Janis records). All the working masters were on Ampex tape running at very high speed (240 IPS) in partial vacuum loose bin loaders. All the duplicating machines for R2R were Ampex slaves running 3000 ft pancakes of BASF 1/4 tape at 120 IPS. They maintained tension well, but the bulk tape was the cheapest we could get that would hold signal, tracking and linearity for 60 days.

The marketing boys decided that new tape owners would play a new tape more during the first few weeks of ownership. As time went on, it would begin to warp and deteriorate, but the owner would think it was something they'd done. It was just the nature of the business. I don't think anything has changed 35 years later?
Given this, it's almost surprising that the tapes I have, mostly NOS, a good number of them still having the leader seal-tape still present (before I unsealed them to have a listen, which it's all about) - sound as good as new And good they sound too. Especially those 7½ ips ones

I'm only collecting artists that I really like, and albums I rate. There's lots and lots of easy-listening stuff, classical and mawky-country out there but I'm focussed on quality stuff.

A few things that I'm looking for and haven't got hold of yet are Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' on (well duplicated - apparently) 3¾ ips, any Roberta Flack - most of her classic albums were released on 7½ ips reel by Atlantic, Byrds albums not pictured, most of which were rumoured to have had reel releases, but I've not come across any in 2 years looking, and the Daddy of them all... the only album by Pink Floyd to ever get an official reel to reel release. 'Atom Heart Mother', on the Japanese 'Odeon' label, 7½ ips. Sold last year for around £1,200. A bit out of my price range

Some pictures...