Can I PLAY any tape on any machine??

[technoplayer]

Much has been made of having a reel to reel biased for the particular tape type being RECORDED upon, but what about a machine PLAYBACK capability??

At issue is I am finally making time to sort thru my large tape collection, which is made up of a vast variety of manufacturers, thicknesses, substrate types, etc. These tapes date from the early 60's to the late 2000's. I admit a lot of tapes I made in the 70's were done with whatever tape I could get my hands on and on whatever machine I could get access to. (Bias? What the heck is that).

Question: with reasonably consistent fidelity, can all of these tapes be played on the same machine (in this case probably either a Teac 6300 or X-20-R)? I am asking if the way the tape was recorded mandates the type of machine it must be played on?

As a side question, I suspect that a lot of the early red oxide stuff ( Scotch, Concertape et al) will probably have content I do not want. Is there any sense in bulk erasing these and keepng them or are they landfill?

And is there any advantage tO the black oxide non backcoated tapes vs the red oxide?

 

[mdainsd]

They will all "play" as long as the track format is the same. About the best one could do, what with all the unknowns, is play them back and use eq to get "what sounds good to your ear". Just my two cents...

 

[briank]

Assuming they're all 1/4" tapes, the only things should be a problem on playback are 1) whether they're quarter-track or half-track recordings, and 2) some of the formulas may have sticky shed problems by now.

 

[technoplayer]

Yes, The tapes are all 1/4'" / quarter track.........Iv'e got that much down.

But they are a mix of 40 to 50 years of tape technologies on mylar, polyester, acetate, and ??? with red, brown, and black oxide, both backcoated and non backcoated.
I have previously weeeded out the sticky stuff (i hope) so all I am looking for is if there is any reason why they would not all play back pretty much the same as they were recorded, for better or worse...

 

[The Ghost of FM]

You'd also need a machine which could work at all the possible speeds that the tape were recorded at. Most hi fi recordings would be 7.5 IPS but others might be at 3.75 or 15 IPS?

Most consumer decks would deal with the two slower speeds but few would also offer 15 IPS as well as 10.5" reel capacity.

Measure twice, cut once!

Cheers!

 

[bobboyer]

mdainsd nailed it. They will all play, assuming your machine can handle the reel sizes and/or tape speeds. Just fiddle with the eq switch(es) to get the best sound from each one. On the oldest tapes - be gentle with the transport controls as the tape itself could be kinda brittle.

I recently archived an old, really old recording on a 5" reel of spliced tape. All of the splices were dead and I ended up re-splicing every joint. 15 minutes worth transfer became a half day project.