Umm..wow analog is hard...

Son of Mixerman said:
certain machines are notorius for drifting out of alignment.
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Really, that bad? Which machines are known to do this?

That then must be some kind of temperature shift, unless there is some other reason for drifting I don't know about, and it can then be held in check by calibrating while the machine is hot. Ambient temperature will change it too of course, but probably less.

All in all, if a machine really would NEED alignment everytime you change wheels, it would be unusable. I guess they just check the alignment each time to make sure it doesn't need realignment...
 
Son of Mixerman said:
But Jake sould probably have a tech come in and calibrate the machine and desk to work and then depending on what your hear on play back ....

SoMm
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I have noticed a discrepancy between the tape machine and desk. The meters on the console will be pegging when the tape machine is well under the red. I guess I would like to try to get the method of this calibration between units down so I could do it myself but you may be right, I should probably have a tech help me the first time through.
 
I calibrate quite often. Align quite often. demag quite often. I clean quite often: before and during a session. I'm a "quite often" kind of guy . . .but then again my reels are probably turning on an average of ten hours a day. jakey you need to calibrate your meters, an oscillator is a requirement. Also you should be laying tone down to tape so mastering houses can calibrate their equipment. Lots of tones are good. Oh shit your going to need an oscilloscope, an MRL tape, etc. oh my. You should definately get your machine aligned. Now! Then you need learn how to align it or you are going to be paying a tech a lot of money. Just pay a dude a couple of hundred to show you how. yep, analog is way less forgiving because it is much more difficult to edit. Now imagine what we old geezers had to go through. razors blades and editing blocks! Actually I still edit analog tape a lot because I prefer the sound of analog edits to digital. jakey congratulations and welcome to the wonderful and vastly superior world of analog.
 
Well nubby, my board luckily has an oscillator onboard with frequencies at 40 100 1k and 10k. But I doubt the mastering house will be a big concern anytime soon.

Couple hundred huh...maybe I'll find an out of work tech on the street who will do it for beer.:D
 
Those tones might get you by for a little while but you're going to need a oscillator that can sweep also. Also tone should be put down regardless if the medium is digital or analog. Besides mastering engineers people may just want to track with you and mix somewhere else. If they move along the mixing engineer is going to need tone. Likewise you'd want tone so you can calibrate your equipment to stuff brought in by clients.
 
demagging

I just talked to my tech last week about demagging. He does a lot of work for major commercial facilities, and he recommends only doing it every six months or so, unless the machine is unknown or exhibits problems associated with magnetism. His main point is that magnetization isn't as big a problem as people think it is.

He also suggested reading Jay McKnight's documents at the Magnetic Reference Library.

http://www.flash.net/~mrltapes/

Jay is one of the founding fathers of magnetic recording and he also recommends demagging every six months. I'm not sure if it is stated on the website - I think it's there somewhere or another.

My point is that although you may feel more comfortable if you demag more often than that (which is fine if you know what you're doing), it really isn't the kind of thing that absolutely must be done all the time, which would add considerably to maintenance time for an analog deck.

- andrew.

Oh, and how cools is this? He had an Ampex ATR-124 in there for an overhaul - I can always dream!
 
calibration etc.

I'd just like to add that most techs should be more than happy to show you how to calibrate (while payign them, of course!) as suggested earlier - they might get called out of town by a big client. If you have basic technical aptitude it isn't that bad. They will not feel like they are losing business to you if you do your own basic deck maintenance.

I also agree about the practicing - I've been playing drums for years and I wind up doing several takes for just about anything I track to tape..... there's always something that could be better!


cheers,
andrew
 
Re: demagging

morte sicura said:
He also suggested reading Jay McKnight's documents at the Magnetic Reference Library.
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It rocks. When I got my 8-track I downloaded everthing that looked even remotely interesting and read it. What MRL doesn't know about tape is not worth knowing...

Jay is one of the founding fathers of magnetic recording and he also recommends demagging every six months. I'm not sure if it is stated on the website - I think it's there somewhere or another.
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I don't remember the 6 month figure, but he points out that all modern recorders have metal parts that are made to not become magnetized, and that it therefore should not be a problem.
 
Hitting rewind is good,...

it builds character! ;)

I'm in the same boat, too, & the practice you get while running through parts repeatedly is invaluable.

Cut/Copy/Paste- PHOOEY! That's for WEAKLINGS!;)
 
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