Some help choosing tape..

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Greeting analog people, quick question for you concerning tape choice..

I have a Fostex Model 80 1/4" 7". A fresh roll of Ampex 456 came with the unit when I bought it (new old stock). My question is, what tape would be a good match for the Model 80? Any ideas? Is the Ampex 456 a good choice? Just trying to pick a tape and stick with it for calibration purposes. Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Thanks guys
 
The Ampex 456 is crap. It was good tape, but Ampex branded 456 (with very few exceptions) has chemical problems that make it useless now for any tape deck. Throw the tape out. Get yourself some RMGI LPR-35 or NOS Quantegy 457. That is the proper tape for this machine. You *can* use "Quantegy" 456, but it is thicker then the deck is designed to use, and you will put more stress on its transport. My A-8 came with about a dozen reels of 456 they weren't new, the owner had striped track 8 with time code and put them aside. I spent a few hours unreeling the tape in to a garbage can, and saving the reels and boxes.
 
It’s a lot harder these days to pick one kind of tape and stick with it, unless you don’t go through lots of tape. The original factory recommended tape is Ampex 457. IMO the manufacturers of decks that specify 1-mil 1800 ft tape like 457, 407 etc have good reasons for doing so. And even more so now since the machines are getting on in years and will last longer given plenty of TLC I would follow factory recommendations. Avoid using 1.5-mil tape like 456 on a regular basis.

Today your best choices for compatible 1-mil tape are…

NOS Ampex/Quantegy 457 and 407 made 1995 and later
NOS 3M/Scotch 207 of any year
NOS Maxell XL/XLI 35-90B of any year
NOS BASF/EMTEC LPR 35 any year
New RMGI LPR 35
NOS Ampex/Quantegy 642 (Good for non-backcoated tape, but not my first choice)
NOS Maxell 35-90 (same disclaimer as 642 above)
NOS AGFA/BASF/EMTEC PEM468/SM468 (The only 1.5 mil tape I would recommend for these machines. The base film is the thinnest and most supple/flexible of any 1.5-mil class tape. Can’t say the same for RMGI 468 however. It seems a bit thicker and stiffer)

Best thing to do if you can is find a case or lot of 5 to 10 tapes listed on eBay. You can try to buy one or two tapes at a time, but the tape you choose may or may not come around again for sale anytime soon.

The way many people use tape today, recording, transferring to digital and reusing the tape, you can get by with a lot less tape… if you work that way.

There were at one time other good tapes for these machines, but some are too few and far between to choose as your primary tape. Others like 3M/Scotch 227 of any year and Ampex 457 made before 1995 have all gone sticky.
 
yeh, what Beck said!

To narrow it down, cheapest and easiest to find is Scotch 207 ... comes up in NOS lots on eBay fairly often and was very popular in the '70s & '80s. Just go easy on the levels if you don't recalibrate (-3 on the VU would be '0').
 
So what are your guys opinions on the RMGI stuff? I hear a lot of bad stuff, but some say they have improved a bit with time. I've seen some nasty pictures of oxide shed from these tapes. Thoughts?
 
I don't think RMGI is bad tape because I know too many people using it and liking it, but I prefer other kinds for the most part. I've only had two reels and I'll probably never buy another RMGI product unless Pyral, which is now taking over manufacture, changes how the company operates. That's mostly what I don't like about RMGI. I’m a very stubborn SOB when I feel crossed, so YMMV.

I can't get behind them because I feel they took the analog community for a ride with outrageous pricing controls. I have early runs of SM468 and SM911 and they both run fine. It was after that when something went wrong with the curing process I believe, which caused widespread shedding problems and returns by consumers. I think what bothers me most is in truth no one got a free replacement for that bad run of tape, because they raised their prices. So in the long run RMGI users paid for the company’s manufacturing mistakes many times over already.

As far as more recent RMGI I'll have to defer to other forum members because I don't use it. But I haven't heard any horror stories lately. One thing I would be careful of with RMGI is buying it from private sellers on eBay. Not everyone who had problems with it returned it for replacement. I've always expected we may see some of those bad runs of tape recirculated. This is going to make NOS RMGI really problematic because it could be the bad crap. Unlike Ampex, which is very straightforward as far as manufacturing dates I have no idea how to interpret RMGI’s lot numbers or even which lot numbers were bad.

Best to buy it new from an authorized dealer.
 
I'm using 10 reels of 1/4" SM911, purchased within the last year from a couple of sources, but mostly from a pro house in Nashville, and am having no problems. Just got a couple of 1/2" reels for the new 38, which should be plenty. As was mentioned above, bumping stuff over to the computer saves a lot of tape. All of my stock has been new, however.
 
I think RMGI are a good company and mean well, but their products have some QC issues. The tape sounds really good, they got that right, but I've had more problematic reels than good ones. Still, I will support them and buy tapes in the future if I need them. Personally, I think NOS Scotch/3M tapes are the way to go while they are still available. Quantegy is good but I have some concerns about what could happen in the future. Not to raise any red flags, but I put on a reel of 2005 or so 456 and it seemed to shed more than I remember it, some drop outs, etc. Very unscientific observation, but it just made me kind of wonder about the future of all of these tapes.
 
lonewhitefly said:
Quantegy is good but I have some concerns about what could happen in the future. Not to raise any red flags, but I put on a reel of 2005 or so 456 and it seemed to shed more than I remember it, some drop outs, etc. Very unscientific observation, but it just made me kind of wonder about the future of all of these tapes.
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No, you got that right. Not only do I recommend nothing from Ampex earlier than late 1994, but also nothing later from Quantegy than early 1995. And to make it simple maybe best to just remember Ampex/Quantegy from 1995 through 2004 is what you want.

When the new owners took over after the original Quantegy went bankrupt in 2005 they had some bad runs of tape. It's not sticky shed, but you'll run across some Quantegy batches from 2005 until the new owners threw in the towel with worse than normal oxide shed. I’m not sure the exact date to the day, but the early stuff from 2005 when Quantegy fired up the line again at the request of organizations like NASA and SPARS seems about the same good quality as 2004 batches. Once the old Quantegy people were completely out of the picture and the works were under new ownership it wasn’t quite the same. I think they lost a lot of the technical expertise with some of the people that found new jobs right away and didn’t come back to the new Quantegy.
 
Beck said:
No, you got that right. Not only do I recommend nothing from Ampex earlier than late 1994, but also nothing later from Quantegy than early 1995. And to make it simple maybe best to just remember Ampex/Quantegy from 1995 through 2004 is what you want.

When the new owners took over after the original Quantegy went bankrupt in 2005 they had some bad runs of tape. It's not sticky shed, but you'll run across some Quantegy batches from 2005 until the new owners threw in the towel with worse than normal oxide shed. I’m not sure the exact date to the day, but the early stuff from 2005 when Quantegy fired up the line again at the request of organizations like NASA and SPARS seems about the same good quality as 2004 batches. Once the old Quantegy people were completely out of the picture and the works were under new ownership it wasn’t quite the same. I think they lost a lot of the technical expertise with some of the people that found new jobs right away and didn’t come back to the new Quantegy.
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ah, i see ... i thought maybe it was weather changes due to moving from Texas to Calif. or something! Interesting thing is that this particular reel was fine back in '05/'06 when it was recorded; I hadn't taken it out since then. So whatever issues seemed to occur between then and now.
 
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