Re: [ARSCLIST] reel-to-reel tape

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx wrote:

> In a message dated 9/23/2005 5:27:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> ArcLists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> I had John French make me a 4-channel 8-track head assembly for my
> "FrankenSony" pair of APR-5003V recorders that lets me play four
> tracks simultaneously. The really neat thing about this head is that
> I have infinite height adjustment without changing the head azimuth
> or zenith, so I can tease out any track snippets as long as they are
> at least 0.021 inches wide (or have adjacent silence totalling that
> dimension).
> ***********
>
> I've used a similar technique to recover the "center" track from some paper
> based tapes that had been recorded on a Brush "Sound Mirror" then reused on a
> two track machine.
>
> It is very useful to be able to probe old tapes for hidden recordings or to
> eliminate artifacts of badly aligned recorders.
>
> Mike Csontos

This is worth knowing....we had a full-track Utah recorder from 1950, and
beginning around 1959 the family (with me as an unwitting accomplice in the
crime, since I wasn't old enough to protest) copied these tapes onto the newer
Wollensak half-track at slower speed and then used the older tapes. One of these
years I'm going to want to try and get at the original recordings still down the
centre of the tapes, since the dubs were not very good.

dl