[ARSCLIST] Rim Drive Reel to Reel Re: [ARSCLIST] Audograph disc

[Martin Fisher <wmfisher@xxxxxxxx>]

CAPITALS for emphasis lest someone accuse me of YELLING!!!!........

I've had good results with Rim drive recorded tapes by utilizing a HIGH 
TORQUE turntable as the take-up platter.  Build up the spindle with masking 
tape, or some other appropriate material, to CENTER the ORIGINAL reel.  Tape 
the reel down to the platter and use this as the capstan/drive to pull the 
tape through the transport.  The equipment must be manipulated a little to 
get everything leveled so that the tape winds onto the take-up reel properly 
without scraping the flanges or encountering any other obstacles.  Also the 
turntable and headstack/transport should be as close as possible to avoid 
anomalies that might arise from a long tape path between playback heads and 
take-up/capstan point.  It's not a perfect solution but neither are most rim 
drive recordings with their persistent wow depending on concentricity of the 
reel on the original machine, the quality of the design, etc.

This results in a relatively linear playback that can then be manipulated in 
software to adjust other issues such as speed and EQ.

Make sense??

I'm sure Richard H. or others could fill in all the whys and wherefores of 
this arrangement in a lot fewer words than I.  Hope it helps someone.

Martin




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 7:29 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Audograph disc


> At 01:37 AM 2008-10-17, you wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Biel" <mbiel@xxxxxxxxx>
> > > This was a constant linear speed machine.  There was no turntable motor.
> > > There was a small motor and rubber wheel in the arm which drove the
> > > turntable.  The speed would constantly change from the outside to the
> > > inside.  I'm not sure if they ever published the specs.  They would
> > > never expect they would be played back on anything but their own
> > > machines.
> > "Constant linear speed machines" have, AFAIK, never done much except
> > generate phonorecords which cannot be usefully played except on their
> > own specific brand of machines! I have one of the UK make (forget its
> > name) of the twenties...and playing it on a normal 78 machine is an odd...
> > but useless from a listening standpoint...experience...?!
>
> I cannot imagine these being less predictable than the horrid, 
> curse-on-the-audio-world "Rim Drive" capstanless, reel-to-reel (usually 
> mini) audio tape recorders.
>
> We've had reasonably good success with plotting the trajectory of the 
> speed in "Elastic Audio" in the more-featured versions of Samplitude. DC6 
> has a similar feature (which was one of my main uses of that prior to the 
> inclusion of "Elastic Audio" in Samplitude.
>
> The nice thing about doing this correction in the computer is you can 
> tweak it in an arbitrarily large number of segments and you can plot a 
> line through that segment which is not constant speed. If the speed gods 
> are with you, it can be as simple as a single sloped line...usually not 
> with Rim Drive tapes.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
>
> Richard L. Hess                   email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.