At 10:49 PM 2010-03-11, Corey Bailey wrote:

>I transferred some home recordings last year from six 8 track tapes and every
>one suffered from the problems that Tom mentions below. What a PITA! I started
>to sketch out some ideas for mounting an 8 Track head on a reel-to-reel deck
>but decided there isn't the demand for the format.

Hi, Corey, and all,

Pre-recorded tapes in this format can be surprisingly good, but 
home-recorded tapes in this format are mostly ugly. I determined that 
there MIGHT be a demand for good recovery of this format and while I 
have paid off the head assembly, I don't know if there is a need for 
more than one or two people to be able to seriously recover this 
format. At this point, I believe I am the only one who is 
well-equipped to do this.

I have the head mounted on a Sony APR-5000 head assembly and it 
sounds far superior to a top-of-the-line glass-headed Akai 8-track 
player. It is a premium Nortronics quad 8-track head and it is 
mounted on a special elevator assembly so that height can be adjusted 
while maintaining azimuth. John French did a beautiful job with this. 
I also use this head for playing two-track recordings which have been 
over-written by quarter-track recordings. With it, I can read any 
21-mil swath of a 1/4-inch tape.

I do not attempt to re-load the 8-tracks but send the tapes back on 5" reels.

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
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.