Topic: Reels made on Revox half-track machine - what to do?

[NewHomebrew]

Today I met someone who is deep into music, and has some interesting material on Revox half-track reels.  I'm not too familiar with the various flavors of reel-to-reel.  I guess I'm looking for some basic knowledge and advice on getting this stuff onto DAT or some other digital format.  Should I call around to local studios and see if they have the proper machine to playback?

[MattD]

Paging Heath ...

[wbrisette]

If I had to guess, these tapes were probably made on the Revox B-77, this is an excellent reel-to-reel which we used all the time in the studio I worked in back in the early 80's. You're going to need to find another reel-to-reel to transfer the tapes, however, beware of the following things!

1) Alignment of the heads. Reel-to-reel tape recorders as well as their bigger multi-track recorders are much more picky about head alignment than cassette decks. Make sure you align the head to the tape. Ultimately the best way to do this is with an alignment tape, but you can also do it by ear. Put a tape on, play it back and inside the head mechanism is a screw. Turn it until you get the best sound out of the tape. This won't be perfect alignment, but will put you in the ball park.

2) The tape! There was a big issue with all reel-to-reel tape made from the mid 1970 to the early part of the 80's. Playing most Agfa and Ampex tapes (two of the more popular brands used during this time period) with taking special precautions will result in a big wad of goo or simply watching the tape shed all the magnetic substrate as it passes over the pinch rollers and head and thus no recording at all. A special baking technique was developed which gives you a single shot at taking that material off the tape onto another material.

3) bias. Reel-to-Reel recorders are much more picky about bias when it come to tape. This is more of a recording to tape thing, but still nice to have set properly to maximize the audio frequencies. This should be done by somebody with the proper equipment and knowledge.

Wayne

[jhirte]

http://www.tangible-technology.com/tape/baking1.html

[pgoelz]

I have a functional Revox A77 if you cannot find any local solutions and if you trust shipping the tapes to a stranger.   It is a half track stereo model that runs at 15 and 7.5 IPS. 

I used it about two months ago to transfer an archival safety copy of an old vinyl album. 

But your best bet would be to find someone locally so you do not have to ship the tapes anywhere. 

Paul

[NewHomebrew]

Paul thanks for the generous offer.  I'll run it by the owner and see what he says, but I don't think he wants to let this stuff out of his sight 

The tapers are coming up on 30 years old.  They haven't been played since they were recorded.  Not sure if baking is mandatory?

Thanks everyone for the helpful input. 

[wbrisette]

The tapers are coming up on 30 years old.  They haven't been played since they were recorded.  Not sure if baking is mandatory?

This would put these tapes right in the time period for needing baking. If these tapes are all of the same brand, and they are NOT Agfa or Ampex, you might be OK. The problem seems to be limited to these two major brands, but there have been reports of other brands also needing baking. If these are rare (sounds like they are), baking may be the only way to preserve the audio on them. If he has some tape that he wouldn't mind losing, you might see if playing the tape causes any shedding, but it's a game of Russian Roulette.

Wayne

[heath]

send em to me.  i do this for a living and have mulitple half-trackheads at my disposal (just no 1/4 track right now to do the dead vault reels   )

I can run these through the some of the finest a>d's made and get em to you in just about any format.  for somebody on the board, i'd do this for free to keep the music circulating!

h