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I've been dubbing some material to new Quanergy 499
for archival purposes.
Each time I record a reel for the first time, I
find a considerable amount of debris accumulated on the plate around the
head block. There is a smaller amount on later passes. I never
had this experienc with 3M tape in the past. I assume this means Quanergy
has eliminated a step which cleans out that debris as the last
step in the manufacturing process. The debris is benign at normal
playing speeds, but running the new tape in fast-forward is probably sucking in
these motes between the layers as the tape winds since the air currents on the
surface of the recorder are speeded up. I haven't measured, just making
assumptions from past experience.
At 7.5 the tape runs about 32:30. Older tapes
held over 33:00. When dubbing from full older tapes, I'm comming up short
on occassion, and always if I put set-up tones on the same reel. To avoid
splices in the program material, I'm adding tones at the front from a separare
reel in the same batch and putting in leader before the program begins.
What a production pain!
When recording set-up tones of 1K and 10K,
I've found wide variations when starting at the beginning of the
reel. One shows 10K at +2, another at -3.
In all, the quality control on this stuff is
lousy. And there is that nagging suspicion, yet to be proven, that this
tape will also turn sticky. It feels a bit so during the handling process
when first threading it up.
In short, I'm not convinced this product is giving
us the 50 or so year backup we have been lead to believe.
Comments?
Steve Smolian
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