Buying old or new reel to reel tape

While I'm away working I've been buying all sorts of stuff - Chinese 'interesting' products. NAB adaptors, more counterfeit mics - A cardioid only Neumann U87 - yes, a U87 with only one capsule at a low price, but yesterday I got offered a U87 at a cost to me of £12 plus postage, and a U88 at the same price. The U88 appears to be the 87 but in a non tapering casing - like a U47? No idea what they'll be like of course. Back home a cardioid only 414 has arrived, so that will be interesting - and for once, it is not branded as AKG, so just looks like one, so not a counterfeit. As soon as I'm home and the studio up and running again, I'll power them up and see what they're like. If you want to see what I've been up to - there's a bit of sound involved - you can have a look here
 
Interesting video. Another way of using pancakes is to just dismantle your empty spool and fix the flanges onto the pancake. No need to respool and less chance of the tape going everywhere. In fact you could do the same thing when taking the old tapes off the spools - just remove the flanges and push the old tape off.

I prefer to buy the plastic spools of tape. They're not much more expensive than pancakes.

It is also interesting that you had a bad experience with Zonal tape. I wonder if that is really Zonal tape on those spools as I've found that it usually plays fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top