Hi Steve,

In 2000 at the ARSC conference in Chapel Hill, I gave a talk about my
work on restoration of the 1938-39 "From Spirituals To Swing" concerts,
for a Vanguard Records reissue.  The original lacquers had been discarded
after engineer William Savory transferred them to 1/4 inch tape, which he
de-clicked with a razor blade.  The amount of tape removed by his splices 
left many audible jumps in the music.  The tapes were full-track at 15 ips,
and I found that opening up his splices by a small amount would make the 
jumps less noticeable, largely inaudible.  Strictly speaking, the spaces created 
by opening up the splices produced very slight drops in level, where the incoming 
and outgoing edges of the tape were cross-faded by the playback head. (A splice 
opened up to half the length of the piece originally cut out would effectively reduce 
the missing audio from 1/60th of a second to 1/120th.)  I opened up and remade
literally hundreds of splices in order to achieve a slight improvement in the meter 
of the music, and in passages where many clicks had been cut out, the result 
was noticeable improvement, if not perfect.

Doug Pomeroy
Audio Restoration and Mastering Services
193 Baltic St   
Brooklyn, NY  11201-6173
(718) 855-2650
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> Date:    Sat, 15 Nov 2014 12:19:07 -0500
> From:    Steven Smolian <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: splice cleaning and repair
> 
> Naphtha, i.e., Ronson lighter fluid.  It's the only ingredient listed on the
> container.  Dunno about other lighter fluids- this is the product I've used
> for this purpose (and removing price-gun type labels from records and LP
> covers) for 50 or so years.
> 
> As a bona-fide old-timer, I'd like to add that back in the day (before
> digital declicking), when transferring 78s and lacquers to tape and
> declicking them subsequent to their transfer, more complex wave forms,such
> as French horns, pianos and double reeds, the spice was attempted a number
> of times, and played after each attempt. The distance between the two sides
> of the splice was critical.  Even if mot completely successful, the
> phase-bang (just made that term up) could be mitigated by infinitesimal
> changes to the distance between the tape ends.  French horns caused the most
> serous problem.  I remember working for hours on a version of Schubert's
> "Auf dem Strom" with Dennis Brain.  I still love the piece, not always the
> case when such intensive time has gone into a project.  One point is that,
> when inspecting those splices now, a flash of white splicing tape (viewed
> from the oxide side) may be a deliberate spacing rather than initially
> careless editing. 
> 
> There were declicking devices available at the time.  I used the Packburn
> from its earliest days but the audio extrapolation devices (grab a piece of
> the previous sound, delay it and patch it over the click as made by Garard
> and many other were hopeless.  
> 
> Steve Smolian