The dangerous world of Reel-to-Reel Tape
It feels like I re-entered the world of tape knowing full well of all the downsides, yet I did it anyway. I spent much of my youth glued to my dad's decks, making recordings. As cassette and digital came of age, I always appreciated the sound of tape.
Whether this adventure is worth it is a subjective exercise. For folks who plop down $500-$1k on cables or those who swap gear often, tape is really not that expensive, relatively speaking. Titles are limited though.
The sound quality and experience is quite something. Before jumping back into R2R, I had 4 versions of Muddy Waters' Folksinger. Hearing Chad Kasem's firm's work on it in 15ips it's just something else. Body, size, and presence are just different than very good vinyl and digital. And this is with the stock reproduce board from a Revox PR99 MKIII. I can only imagine what's going to happen when I rebuild that card, put in a modern one, or run directly from the head out to a preamp.
Maybe I'll see some of you in R2R Rehab, where I'll try to get sober from tape.
@kraftwerkturbo I have a mix-tape cassette I made of college radio tracks from 1983 (dubbed from my then-new records) and it stall plays quite well! It's a Memorex Type II with Dolby B. On commercial open-reel I have a Tom Jones s/t album on Parrot, Wonderland Of Bert Kaempfert, J. Lennon's Plastic Ono Band on Apple and owned (but recently sold) Hendrix' Band Of Gypsies on Capitol, all original 7.5 ips tapes printed & sold around 1968-71, all still play great. |
@atmasphere I considered trying to bake the tapes, but at that time in my life, I had neither the time or inclination to do so. I do have a head demagnetizer. It came with a Teac reel-to-reel maintenance kit, which has just about everything one needs to clean and service the heads, pinch rollers, transport mechanism, splice tapes, and leaders, etc. I’ve had it since 1981. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s when I used my R2R a lot, I’d demagnetize the heads and transport mechanism about once a month. I did not know if that was enough or too much, but it worked for me. I did keep the demagnetizer away from my tapes 😀. |
Tusk master tape and most of Fleetwood Mac brain cells must have been baked in a toaster oven in the studio… @atmasphere Merry Christmas Ralph ! |
