Re: [ARSCLIST] Squealing Scotch 996

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Joav:

I haven't had a large-scale project. If I had the $$ coming in from that
kind of project, I'd go much larger-scale and get a good laboratory oven
like Steve Puntollilo has (www.sonicraft.com).

If I remember correctly, this AM unit has 6 or 8 trays. I've done as many as
four 10" reels at a time. Luckily, I just don't have too many of these stuck
tapes in my collection and I think the large-scale clients for this sort of
work don't know or care about my little operation. The most valuable stuck
tape I've handled -- from the client's viewpoint -- was a music recital that
featured a gentleman's daughter who later died in a car accident. The baking
worked like a charm and the guy went home with several CD copies and a
cassette for his car (which didn't have a CD player in it). The recording
was really good; apparently the music teacher's husband was an amateur
recordist with some decent equipment.

I also experiemented -- with successful results -- with baking several reels
of Ampex 407 in my regular old (circa 1975) electric oven at the "warm"
setting overnight. The oven keeps a temp of 135 degrees F in the Warm
setting and it's an old G.E. oven so its temp is pretty constant. These were
reels of LP's I made when I was a teen, quarter-track. Since the LPs are in
a lot worse shape 25 years down the road, I wanted to see if the tapes held
better audio. They did and the oven-baking worked great for that one play I
needed for a transfer. I would not do this with a client's tape.

-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joav Shdema" <joavs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 4:37 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Squealing Scotch 996


> Tom,
> How many tapes can you bake in the AM Harvest food dehydrator? How do
> you approach a large scale baking project, say 100 reels and more?
>
> Best,
>
> Joav Shdema