Hi Stephen:

I had a small pile of slow-speed reels a while back. Same thing as you, amateur-made oral history
material. I decided, rather than find some lousy old slow-speed machine to play them, I'd transfer
them at 3.75IPS on my Technics 1520 machine (perfect to handle the tiny reels without
over-tensioning and stretching the tape). I transferred them a 96/24, and then lowered the pitch
accordingly. It worked just fine, even the stuff recorded at 15/16IPS (which was fascinating, it was
the person's full-blood Navajo grandmother talking about the early 1900's and growing up on an
Indian Reservation). The key thing was that both the client and I realized these were not
high-fidelity items, so losing some digital resolution to get to the proper speed (pitch) was OK, in
fact there were no digital artifacts. We were both somewhat surprised how well the audio turned out,
you could clearly hear crickets and birds behind people's voices, old 1960's cars starting up and
going by, propeller and older jet airplanes passing overhead, etc. It was a true time capsule.

In fact, the worst reel in the bunch was a 3.75IPS that had been recorded on a Uher with failing
batteries. It ended up easiest to ramp up the speed adjust knob on the Technics, using me ears to
keep voice pitches in a reasonable range. It was tricky but it worked on the third try. I also
transferred at exactly 3.75IPS and tried to get better results with DSP pitch. It was time-consuming
and the "steps" were more audible. Once again, ears trump gadgets.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Bolech" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 2:57 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Slow Reel-to-reels


Hi everyone, I'm hoping some of you could give me recommendations for good options to play back 1
7/8 ips and even the occasional 15/16 tapes. We have a large oral history collection, and though
the majority are at 3.75 ips, there are some at these slower speeds. What are you guys using for
these speeds, and what do you recommend?

Thank you,
Stephen Bolech