Gregorio,
This is why I'm such a fanatic about developing tapes and looking at
them. The fact that track 3 has B NOT backwards confuses me.
Also, I'm surprised you are writing 1/3/2/4 because visually on the tape
you'd see 1/2/3/4 and that helps understanding.
You could use 1 + 4 to capture, but I'd rather fully understand why as
the narrow tracks, especially at the edge, are not the most desirable
unless that's all you have.
With track 3 B NOT backwards, I'm at a loss to explain.
http://richardhess.com/notes/category/audio/magnetic-tape-developing/
Develop the tape and post a photo and link to it from the reply message
to the list.
Do not rule out misaligned heads. Also, some machines used 1/2 and 4/3
as stereo recording and they might have been UK machines instead of the
more common US practice of 1/3 4/2 (in all instances L/R and SideA SideB).
Cheers,
Richard
On 2012-02-27 5:39 AM, Gregorio Garcia Karman wrote:
> Dear List,
>
> looking forward to the beginning of a new digitization week: everything is going well in Cambridge thanks in great extent to the support of the members of the list. Huge thanks!
>
> Now, I have a small group of 1/4 inch tapes in the collection on which I am working (ca 1950s-70s, recorded mainly on Ferrographs) which seems to have a track format, which I haven't met before. On those tapes standard half-track and half-track butterfly Studer blocks consistently produce a dual mono signal with unacceptable crosstalk on both channels (bleeding of about -20 dB referring to the signal on the other channel).
>
> On the other hand, the output of a quarter-track headblock is as follows:
>
> track 1: Signal A
> track 3: Signal A + B
> track 2: Signal A + B backwards
> track 4: Signal B backwards
>
> It would seem that this very small group of tapes would have been recorded on a machine with a very narrow guard-band in comparison to the rest of the tapes I have. What is your opinion about transferring those tapes on a quarter track headblock and keeping tracks 1 and 4?
>
> I would also be curious about which machine could have had a track format that would agree with the former observations.
>
> Thanks for your comments!
>
> Gregorio Garcia Karman
> [log in to unmask]
>
--
Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
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