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Sound Forge has a Pitch Bend function under the Effects menu. You can graphically draw the pitch change, in a window that you can adjust from +/-1 semitone all the way to +/-24 semitones. I have used it very effectively, but it normally takes some fiddling to get things right. 

I can't remember if anyone commented in this in early replies to this question, but whenever I have a tape on a very small hub, I wind the tape onto a large hub 7-inch or a 10 1/2 inch reel, at least for the duration of the transfer. The amount of torque required to pull the tape off a very small hub is stressful to old tapes. 

We have some Scotch 100 paper tapes in our archive. The 7-inch reels have very small center hubs, and three very large (1/4-inch or so) slots. Quite a few years ago I permanently wound all of them onto 10-1/2 inch reels. Playback is much less stressful and motion is smooth. 

As someone mentioned earlier, if these tapes were made on a battery-powered machine, there won't be any power line hum to lock onto. 
The Plangent system, which was used for the excellent Mercury box of the Marcel Dupré recordings, locks onto the bias to eliminate pitch instability. But, it's probably way too expensive for anyone not doing this sort of thing every day, and even hiring someone who has that system may be cost-prohibitive for a project like this (unless the customer is willing to pay the price). 

Best,
Gary


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeff Willens
Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2019 10:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [ARSCLIST] Reel-to-Reel tape problem

Wavelab Pro also has a pitch bend function that will do this as long as you know how many semitones off it is from start to the point you want. It works incredibly well. 

Jeff


On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 09:27:27 -0400, J. D. Mack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Thank you, everyone, for confirming what I suspected might be true, and
>for your advice.
>
>Incidentally, Adobe Audition's spectral frequency display is a nice way
>to visualize how a recording speeds up or slows down so one can adjust
>accordingly.
>
>J. D.