Tom,
I mean half track, I guess. Like an LP you have to turn the tape over
to get the second side. I also have some tapes that only play one side and
then of course the later stereo ones. I was surprised how many commercial
reels I still have when I went back to check them. Jack
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 7:33 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] commerical reels history (was Boston Pops question)
> Hi Jack:
>
> Just to clarify the history here, when you say "2-track (non-stereo)" do
> you mean half-track (2-sided mono) or do you mean one-direction mono? And,
> if you mean one-direction mono, are you sure they are not full-track? It
> should clarify this on the tape boxes, although the nomenclature used
> early on varied between companies.
>
> I forgot to mention one thing in my post before -- some of these old tapes
> can be real gems and the best available source. Here's a for-instance.
> Apparently, the master tapes for most or all of the Everest Woody Herman
> albums are lost. The CD reissues are all obviously (and poorly) made from
> LPs (clearly audible groove distortion, sloppy and overbearing tick and
> pop removal, digital artifacts galore from over-agressive
> noise-reduction). I was able to borrow the quarter-track, not even the
> 2-track but the early quarter-track duped reels and it was like night and
> day. Especially in the case of the Woody Herman and Tito Puente session,
> the reels were dynamic and rarely distorted while the CD reissue made from
> LPs was awful. There was an earlier European or Asian CD of this same
> material that sounds like it was made from a cleaner LP and is not
> aggressively digi-tooled to where there are annoying artifacts but it's
> still not as good as the reel. From what I've been able to gather, most of
> the Everest pop and jazz master tapes are either lost or badly damaged, so
> one hopes there are a few more of these quarter-track, or better 2-track,
> reels floating around. Especially in the case of the earlier dupers
> (half-tracks, 2-tracks and very early quarter-tracks), the quality is
> usually very good aside from hissy tape. By the early 60's, duping speeds
> were faster and quality is not as good. By the time you got to the release
> product being 3.75IPS and duping speeds were up to 16x, the quality was
> awful. Aside from saving tape, duping to 3.75IPS allowed standard duping
> speeds in factories that by then were mainly doing 8-tracks, although a
> place with a decent on-going quarter-track business would have a separate
> duping line for that.
>
> There are several good articles covering the evolution of tape duping in
> the archives of the AES Journal. Anyone interested can search and buy
> articles at the AES website. Ampex published articles about the first 3200
> system in the mid-50's, their higher-speed system for multiple formats in
> teh early 60's and their solid-state bin-loop system in the late 60's. I
> believe at least one of the makers of cassette duping equipment published
> at least one article, too.
>
> Tape duping must have been at least marginally profitable because people
> stayed in it all through reels, 8-tracks and cassettes. There was one
> brief moment, at the end of the LP era as CD's were just catching on,
> maybe 2 years in the early 80's, when cassettes outsold LPs. This was
> after the Walkman caught on big-time and before CD's were mainstream (when
> players still cost a grand and didn't sound so great). CD's then caught on
> and the cassette began submerging. I'm not sure there are any large-scale
> cassette duping for commercial music operations left. There are some
> operations taylored to smaller jobs who will do, for instance, 100 copies
> of a set of medical conference recordings or 1000 cassette box sets for
> Radio Spirits. I believe cassette duping for music is still a viable
> business in Asia but I might be wrong about that.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jack Palmer" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 8:16 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] commerical reels history (was Boston Pops
> question)
>
>
>> I checked about a hundred of my tapes and I am not sure any of the 2
>> track (non stereo) were from 1952. I have several 2 track non-stereo
>> tapes, 7 1/2 speed that were issued by Ampex for London. No date on the
>> box or tape reel, so I can't be certain of the date. None of the early 2
>> tracks I bought were stereo though. I thought the high-fidelity was
>> great and worth the money. Thanks for making me look. I found three
>> Gilbert and Sullivan operettas on reels that I didn't even remember
>> owning. Jack
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 7:10 AM
>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] commerical reels history (was Boston Pops
>> question)
>>
>>
>>> I'd be interested to know what's on them and who released them. I do not
>>> believe you'll find that they are in fact 2T stereo. They are likely
>>> half-track (2-sided) mono. If they are stereo, it would be very
>>> interesting to know who put them out as in 1952 only a few people were
>>> experimenting with 2-channel stereo recording of music. No major labels
>>> yet, although I believe RCA started making 2T masters in 1954 or even
>>> 1953 -- I think Zarathustra with Reiner was the first 2T session.
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Jack Palmer" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 12:29 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] commerical reels history (was Boston Pops
>>> question)
>>>
>>>
>>>> I bought my first 2 track tapes for my reel recorder/player in the
>>>> Base Exchange in Sidi-Slimane, Morocco in 1952. I still have a couple
>>>> of them in fact. Jack
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 9:40 AM
>>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] commerical reels history (was Boston Pops
>>>> question)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Ampex developed their own, was developed by Leon Wortman in NY and
>>>>> detailed in a 1951 Radio & TV News article. Wortman's line made
>>>>> full-track or half-track tapes. Commercial half-track tapes were
>>>>> available as early as 1951 or 1952, but there was only a very small
>>>>> consumer market for reel to reel machines at that point. > Because
>>>>> this was a new format sold at a premium price, a lot of QC attention
>>>>> was paid by the reputable companies in this era, so the net quality is
>>>>> very high. Akin to what happened when stereo LPs came along.
>>>> .
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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