Re: [ARSCLIST] cassette crackle

[Michael Biel <mbiel@xxxxxxxxx>]

David Lennick wrote:
> we had a similar problem with tapes made on our ancient Utah tape 
> recorder (full track, bought in 1950). When we began copying the tapes 
> made on that machine over to the Wollensak in 1959, anything recorded 
> prior to 1955 had to be copied from another Wollensak because repeated 
> repairs to the Utah had resulted in its running fast (about 8 IPS) and 
> the tapes were noisy and cruddy sounding after a certain point, 
> probably because of head wear. We didn't have a quarter-track machine 
> yet so we were too dumb to know that we'd get better results from the 
> right channel or down the middle of the tape track.
>
> dl
Ooh! Ooh! (as in Toody in Car 54)  Here's something I haven't mentioned 
before.  Any of you ever try to play a mono upper-quarter track tape on 
a full-track Ampex 600???  When I was at the Temple Univ station I 
sometimes recorded something on my quarter-track home machine for 
playing at the station, knowing that I had to use clean tape and record 
on only one track.  Our station was still in mono.  The tapes played on 
our half-track mono machines of various makes, on our half-track stereo 
Ampex 354-2, on the damn full-track Maggie PT-6's,  but it was BLANK 
when played on our full track Ampex 600, and possibly our 601.  I 
finally discovered why.  The head face on the playback head was convex 
curved to play the center of the tape and miss the edges.  It was a true 
portable machine and they figured that it would sometimes play damaged 
tapes and this would avoid playing ragged or creased edges.  It took a 
bit of experimentation, but I found a place on the Head-Track Selector 
that would lower the head just enough to record a tape that could be 
played back on a half-track mono machine and that 600. 

Mike (there's a hold-up in the Bronx) Biel   mbiel@xxxxxxxxx