Can we finally put Reel to Reel out of its misery? Put it to rest people.

Ferrite heads aren’t relapped because its not worth it. Relapping a head only works out if you have a more expensive part and nearly all ferrite cassette heads are inexpensive.

For that reason I have an admitted bias against ferrite heads, because their tendency to shatter which happens to no other head type. Once that happens they are junk. Plus an extra 10dB of noise. I stick with metal heads for my recordings and archiving machines. So while it is true ferrite heads did last significantly longer when they were used, once they get enough usage the glass will crack and more times then not you are forced to replace the head. This is the kind of wear I’ve seen on many decks that used ferrite over the years. Doesn’t happen as much with cassettes because of the lower speed.

Trust me on this? They weren’t that awesome. The typical ’studio’ machines had the transport built into the mixer. They were considered semi-pro; the recording industry didn’t take VHS and Beta all that seriously even though they were a compact multichannel format. Their main downfall is they simply weren’t reliable for day in and day out 24/7 service, and when Something Bad happened the tape was often locked inside the transport; requiring a complete disassembly just to rescue a tape that might never play again. Thank goodness those days are past!!

You’re right it is a love hate relationship. The proof is in the pudding on the reliability of VHS. Good luck getting service on your VCR today. Good luck even attempting any repairs yourself. It is true they never manufactured a deck that was both high quality and reliable. Too bad they couldn’t make them as hardy as good old cassettes.

Funny enough I just purchased a Sony SVO 5800 with an old Betacam 2800 I’m going to be using for this kind of project. I’m going to attempt syncing the output of the Sony with the Betacam as a TBC. I’m posting in other VHS forums and this is going off topic, but it’s become a huge obsession of mine to find out how far I can take the format. I even purchased an ozone generator I use to clean my tapes. :)

Never read a thread with two cliches in the subject line.

I feel like I discussed cassettes but not reel to reel. So I want to post that one of the main benefits of reel to reel is that it plays at higher speeds. At higher speeds it’s much harder to distort. So with a reel to reel deck you only need 20dB of dynamic range. Above -20VU cassettes fall on their face. Cassettes got away with less distortion with noise shaping technologies like Dolby and DBX, and the only reason why it required more headroom. Digital recordings of course are most easy to distort which is why you need 144dB of headroom. It’s pretty amazing what reel to reel is capable of and pretty understandable why it was the standard for so long. Cassettes can still sound incredible. It really is apples and oranges. You can't compare reel to reel to any other format. 

It would be amazing the quality of r2r tapes we could manufacture and release today if we wanted to. Listing to music without any translation to ‘other delivery medium’. Even digital sources would find more life on tape.

A good tape, beats most other available formats/mediums. For most of the music I love, it’s the medium in which those recording were made.

Yes digital in a sense can be closer the Master Tape, but you decimate time, frequency and loudness to another domain full of time and frequency characteristics and parameters that must ‘work together’. And then you have to do it all in reverse and get it right.

Vinyl you need to go through a completely different mastering process. You lose bass in stereo, and you lose bass energy the closer to the end of a record side you go. Plus there’s vinyl impurities. You have to add a special EQ and then remove it at phono preamp due to real physical limitations. You go from Master, to Lacquer, to multiple stampers. Stampers wear out. Scratches, heat, dust, static electricity are enemies of vinyl production and playback.

With reel to reel tape you go from Master Tape, to Dub Master Tapes, probably with some EQ, to Reel-to-Reel tape you play at home.

Which seems most likely to reproduce faithfully the analog event that is instruments and voices making sound?

I have to second that. I would have preferred a cassette or reel to reel comeback instead of vinyl, but we might get lucky as I heard those are making a comeback as well. Better buy them while you still can. Lol! Vinyl is one of the most difficult and expensive consumer formats to get good results out of. You can spend stupid amounts of money on cartridges, needles, arms, pres, and still get average results.

I agree that tape has a different sound than digital, but most of the difference between the two formats comes through when recording and not as much when playing back. A digital recording of a tape recording will very much sound like tape and you won’t notice the difference, but a digital recording transferred to tape will add some colorization but will still have the characteristics of a digital recording. It’s like trying to colorize a black and white photo. The "magic" of analog is the way that tape saturates and distorts in the recording studio compared with digital which can’t handle any amount distortion.