Ampex/Quantegy 457 tapes

[Chilljam]

Hi everybody,

I've stumbled upon a recent offer here in Australia. 15 reels of SEALED and UNUSED Ampex / Quantegy 457 analog recording tape. The reels are 1800 ft, 1/4 inch. Now am I mistaken or are these very hard to come by? The store where I usually get my tapes from here in Melbourne does not have this tape and the guy selling it does claim that you can't find it anywhere anymore since they stopped making it. He is asking $650AUD (This is about $400USD).

Interestingly enough, he also says he will throw in his Fostex R8 if you buy the tapes, saying that the only problem that he knows with the R8 is the rewind.

Now I came across this guy because I am looking for a Fostex R8, but he's only selling it together with the tapes. Am I crazy if I think I can buy the tapes and the R8 and then just sell the tapes on eBay and get at least half my money back?

I don't think the R8 is worth more than about $200USD in that condition, although they are quite hard to find here in Australia...

PS: How serious repair job is it to get the rewind working? I've never used an R8 before, is worst case scenario having to buy a new rewind motor? Are parts for this machine even possible to find?

 

[RRuskin]

Hi everybody,

I've stumbled upon a recent offer here in Australia. 15 reels of SEALED and UNUSED Ampex / Quantegy 457 analog recording tape. The reels are 1800 ft, 1/4 inch. Now am I mistaken or are these very hard to come by? The store where I usually get my tapes from here in Melbourne does not have this tape and the guy selling it does claim that you can't find it anywhere anymore since they stopped making it. He is asking $650AUD (This is about $400USD).

Interestingly enough, he also says he will throw in his Fostex R8 if you buy the tapes, saying that the only problem that he knows with the R8 is the rewind.

Now I came across this guy because I am looking for a Fostex R8, but he's only selling it together with the tapes. Am I crazy if I think I can buy the tapes and the R8 and then just sell the tapes on eBay and get at least half my money back?

I don't think the R8 is worth more than about $200USD in that condition, although they are quite hard to find here in Australia...

PS: How serious repair job is it to get the rewind working? I've never used an R8 before, is worst case scenario having to buy a new rewind motor? Are parts for this machine even possible to find?

Good luck finding one if you need a new motor. I doubt there are any left to be had.

Anybody's old tape stock, is an iffy proposition. Even unused, it could be a sticky-shed nightmare and not worth attempting to use even after baking.
Quantegy had such bad QC that I avoid it like the plague. I was returning 50% of every case I bought of 1/4" and 1/2" when they were still in business. Problems were usually bad slitting or poor oxide coating.

In short, I'd advise that you wait for a machine with no apparent problems and buy new tape for it.

 

[Chilljam]

I ended up buying the Fostex R8 and the tapes because I was able to pick up both the Fostex R8 (after trying it) and 7 sealed Quantegy 457 tapes for $250AUD ($150USD).

I was skeptical about the tapes but they were purchased new in 2003 and after trying them, no problems, good as new. The recorder works very well, it has been used very lightly and the heads look new. The only problem was the rewind, you can hear the motor run when you press rewind but the reels just don't spin. I don't really want to open the machine up and touch anything just yet until I get more information on what to do because I'm afraid I might damage something else.

 

[jpmorris]

The only problem was the rewind, you can hear the motor run when you press rewind but the reels just don't spin.

If the R8 is like the A8, it'll be a belt-drive on the reel motors, so it should be simple enough to fix.

 

[Chilljam]

Interestingly enough, not only did rewind not work on the Fostex, the reels would no longer stop either or would stop very abruptly and immediately and this was damaging the tape and just about everything else.

So I found instructions from this site to open up the R8 and as soon as I did, I found the drive belt and the cog on the rewind motor detached. The belt was just sitting around the drive wheels while the cog obviously had flown off the motor and was jammed between another set of gears and cogs above the head assembly and this turned out to be what was screwing up the stopping mechanism. I glued the cog back on and reattached the belt and once the glue dried I had the stopping mechanism running perfect and rewind running perfect... machine good as new.

Now just need to find a head demagnetizer.

 

[sweetbeats]

Nice work Chilljam!!

Pretty much all of us around here recommend the Han-D-Mag for demagging.

I can speak from experience...don't cut corners on your demag unit. Get the real thing.