Re: [ARSCLIST] S-S-S and tape baking

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike, it sounds like you did a lot of the sorting out and fixing when you made the cassettes. If it 
were me, I'd hunt those down, especially if my end product was MP3.

-- Tom Fine

PS -- regarding the mixing of tape types on the same reel. I was taught that's not a good idea but 
sometimes it happens, especially if you're making a master reel of material recorded at different 
times at different studios or locations. But what I was told was a _really_bad_idea_ was to mix 
different thicknesses of tape on the same reel. Experience bears out this wise advise from my father 
and others. I get tapes here all the time with 1 mil and 1.5 mil mixed on the same reel. Whether 
back-coated or not, splices almost always fail where different thicknesses meet.

For what it's worth, my first encounter with SSS was on a reel where I had spliced some Ampex 406 on 
the end of a Scotch 206 reel because the material was 36 minutes total time and I had a pile of 
"heads and tails" hubs of 406 from a studio where I interned. Imagine my surprise when, years later, 
about 33 minutes in, the machine starts gumming up and the tape starts howling. This was early 
1990's. The tape in question was recorded early 1980s but the tape stock itself may have been 
slightly older. My chagrin was soon compounded when it became clear that many recordings I had made 
at that studio were on 406. I therefore became interested in the baking thing relatively early but 
after SSS was a recognized phenom.

I still very much prefer fixing splices on ancient brown-oxide/no-back-coat reels than getting a 
pile of must-bake tapes.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 12:43 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] S-S-S and tape baking


> In a message dated 6/4/2006 12:20:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>
> One question comes to mind from your post. Did I understand you to say you
> dubbed these tapes
> previously? If so, why not make MP3 out of the dub media? I doubt anyone will
> tell much difference
> with spoken word content in MP3 format.
>
> -- Tom Fine
> -------------
>
> I don't have convenient access to the cassettes and some of the material is
> very high quality, while other needs every bit of help it can get to maintain
> intelligibility.
>
> The originals are still available, with everything from FT 7-1/2", to 1/4
> track mono all speeds mixed on the reel, hence the need for an intermediate for
> editing, which was half track scissors and tape, some at 15"/s to remove
> extraneous uhs and noises. Of course digital editing would make this easier, but
> also would be a temptation for even more extensive (and time consuming) editing.
> I'm trying to avoid that by using the same tapes again.
>
> Mike Csontos