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ARSCLIST  April 2007

ARSCLIST April 2007

Subject:

Re: commerical reels history (was Boston Pops question)

From:

Jack Palmer <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 9 Apr 2007 23:57:41 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (147 lines)

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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