Can we finally put Reel to Reel out of its misery? Put it to rest people.
Nakamichi made some very fine cassette decks. I have a Nak Dragon rebuilt by Alex Nikitin with a full set of ANT 4066 mods. But seriously this is nowhere as good as 15IPS tape on a proper studio machine. If you can source a production or distribution master like this then even better :) https://i.vgy.me/hWJJn1.jpg |
@vinny55 There are lots of professional R2R machines with 15 IPS. The thong about professional machines is that they are built like tanks and calibration and line up is easy to do; after all a decent tape tech would line up the machine every day in a studio, back in the heyday of tape. Having had a couple of domestic machines (Revox A77 and a high speed G36), I wouldn't go back to one now. Checking the repro head azimuth on a tape is probably the most important part of line up, as the high frequency losses are significant, is the repro head is not aligned correctly to the way that the record head was aligned when the tape was made. This is something that most people don't worry about on a domestic recorder with commercial 3.75 and 7.5 IPS 4 track tapes. But that's another story. |
OK, here’s on for the trolls. Who would prefer to listen to a Nak cassette deck, Elcaset, DAT or other medium instead of some of my distribution master tapes on a 15 IPS Studio R2R? https://i.vgy.me/FY946m.jpg https://i.vgy.me/hWJJn1.jpg |
Glupson, The links are to my scans of the tape labels. The Mary Chain is the original Jugoton distribution master, sent to the former Yugoslavia. As I know Alan McGee, Jim & William Reid well, they have signed my master. The George Michael is a safety copy from a CBS Netherlands distribution/production master. If you look hard enough, you can find little gems. There are quite a few distribution/production masters in circulation. Don’t forget in the heyday of the vinyl LP, there were lots of countries with record pressing plants. They all needed a tape sent from the record company to cut the lacquer for their own market. When the record plants closed, many of these tapes survived. Charlie PS Sleepwalker - the George Michael tape is stunning. My friend Chalkie Davies was his tour photographer in 1982. He said that he was an utterly charming guy. Yes, it’s the polar opposite to the Mary Chain, but I happen to like lots of different music styles. |
In the days when tape and vinyl ruled the roost, the record companies would send a production/distribution master tape to Yugoslavia, South Africa, Mexico or wherever, so that records could be pressed for the local market. In due course, they sent hard discs, and now it gets sent over the internet. When the record pressing plants closed, as everyone went to CD, the tapes got put in a dumpster/skip, or alternatively people took them away. The record companies had no desire to retrieve all these tapes, as they had nowhere to store them. Anyway, the record companies already had the original multitrack and stereo mix down in a vault. |
Glupson, I think you have got a bit confused about the "vault". Sony, Warners, BMG all have vast temperature and humidity controlled vaults, where they keep the original multi-track and stereo mix down MASTERS. These never leave the record company. Copies (in their hundreds) were made by the record company and sent all around the world to record pressing plants. When these record pressing plants went bust in the 80/90s, the copies (production/distribution masters) were just put into skips/dumpsters. Some of these got rescued, preserved, and now find their way onto the market. Charlie |
