The fastidious BARCLAY-CROCKER Reel to Reel Tape Company of New York City was internationally famous for manufacturing Reel to Reel tapes with a "no-holds-barred" attitude to quality. BARCLAY-CROCKER, (BC), carefully chose recordings for manufacturing only after critical evaluation of the MASTER TAPE supplied by the original licensing (record) company. After passing stringent BC standards, the record company master was painstakingly recorded 1-to-1 to a running master at 15 inches per second on 1/2 inch mastering tape and not subjected to any external limiting, compression or equalization. These new BC running masters were used to produce the LIMITED EDITION ISSUES (some less than ONE HUNDRED!) at tape recording speeds unheard of for the REEL TO REEL TAPE INDUSTRY.Rod Stephens
Most commercially available Reel to Reel tapes in their day, were duplicated at very high speeds (60 -240 IPS) ranging from 8 to 32 times the tape's normal playing speed at 7 1/2 IPS or up to 64 times the speed of a 3 3/4 IPS tape! The BROAD-BANDWIDTH required at these high speeds severly 'taxes' the amplifiers and heads of the duplicating equipment and adversely affects both the FREQUENCY RESPONSE and NOISE LEVEL of the duplicated tapes. BC's custom modified AMPEX DUPLICATING EQUIPMENT was set to operate at a ratio of only 4-to-1 (running master at 60 ips; recorded copies at 30 ips, or only 4 TIMES the normal playing speed of 7 1/2 ips). Because of this SLOW DUPLICATION speed, combined with the carefully made B-C running master and the use of the most expensive premium polyester-based, Audiotape Q-15, low noise tape they were able to produce a commercially available tape that captures the FULL RANGE, BRILLIANCE, and TONAL SUBTELTIES of the original master, far surpassing the ORIGINAL REEL TO REEL RELEASE by the record company (if one was even released)!!!
BARCLAY-CROCKER CO, until their doors closed, continually produced a product uniquely qualified to become bonafied exceptions to the limiting conditions which were then offered to the music listening public. To say that BC was the state-of-the-art source of it's day for reels is a cliched understatement. BC's very limited releases are simply extremely RARE EXAMPLES OF RECORDED MUSIC PERFECTION. And in time, the value, appreciation & desirability of these recordings will prove the axiom;
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions; perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away". Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Duper masters came from all places at various times. Same problem with cassette duper masters. RCA might well have run a 2-track while they mastered the LP and then used it for a duper master. There's really no telling with mass-made reels. They could be many, many generations away from the master tape. One of the very late-era good-quality cassette dupe places used a better method, but charged big bux for their tapes. They'd have a digital tape made from the real-deal master, at a good mastering facility. Then they'd use the digital tape or 1:1 clones as their cassette duper masters, and dupe at real-time with a roomful of decent-quality cassette decks. Like I said, they charged a premium for their tapes but they did sound good. The only other mass-produced tapes that I have that sound somewhat near what a master should sound like are some early 2-track reels, which were made at 2X or at most 4X speed. Some companies did better than others, even in that era.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Miller" <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Fw: Fw: [ARSCLIST] Dynagroove, was Record tracking
On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, phillip holmes wrote:
With permission from Stan Ricker: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stan Ricker"
Ya--------part of the cutter-amp circuitry; in a plug-in card, in the
Neumann case, the amount of "pre-distort" is diameter-dependent, triggered
by many microswitches along the sled-path.......just before the RIAA eq...
> phillip holmes wrote:
>> So the Dynagroove process was at the mastering end of things (between the
>> tape deck and the cutter head)?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stan Ricker"
To: "phillip holmes"
>>> NEUMANN CALLED THIS "PREDISTORT" CIRCUIT" A "TRACING SIMULATOR"----AND
>>> NOBODY LIKED IT EITHER.........THE TELDEC SYSTEM MENTIONED BELOW IS THE
>>> NEUMANN SYSTEM..............THANK GOODNESS "DYNAGROOVE" WAS ONLY
>>> MASTERING,
>>> AND NOT ORIGINAL RECORDING AS WELL...........STAN
I have several of the commerically issued reel to reel tapes from the dynagroove era. They seem to suffer from the same distortion problems I found on the discs...or is that just a problem with my ears...
As I write this, I don't recall having heard any CD releases of the dynagroove recordings. If the master tapes were ok, are the transfers good?
One of my favorite BSO recordings from that time was the DelloJoio Fantasy
and Variations. After several copies of the disc and reel to reel tapes, I
gave up and now listen to concert broadcast tape I have.
Karl