Good quality 1’’ tape types-brand?

[tedsorvino]

The thing with what you are doing hinges on the magic word 'used'. I baulked at spending £70 a reel on brand new 1/4", but every reel of used tape I bought had issues. Some were just horrible, shedding oxide everywhere and the few good spools reveal the occasional dropout or crease in the entire length. Great for testing, but so annoying when you recorded something and discovered on replay it was wrecked. Like secondhand tyres, or lightly used engine oil. what is the point of a nearly perfect spool of tape that requires wearing it a bit more to test it

It’s a gamble but worth taking. I have 20 reels of used 1/4’’. Only 5 of them have issues on certain parts. Especially Maxell or decent basf (not the ferrite ones) is always excellent. Scotch not so. Never used ampex. That’s my personal experience.

 

[jamesperrett]

256 or 250? I’m not familiar with 256. If you’re talking about 250 that’s amazing…that was some of the first stuff to go.

256 probably never made it to the US. It was made to the BBC type 200 spec and all the reels of it that I've seen were made in Wales.

 

[jamesperrett]

I was quite lucky and found 3 good used pancakes of 1’’ Basf studio grade (2 x LR 56 P and 1x SPR 50 LH) came my way. So I have another taste for future use (except the brand new sm 911)
Since they are pancakes and empty 1’’ (3 screws type) are not very common cheaply, I wonder if I can use my 1/4’’ aluminium reels with the appropriate 1’’ rivet-screw combo set.
Has anyone any idea what the exact dimensions of the 1’’ reels rivets and screws are?

I've used flanges from 1/4" Ampex reels on 1/2" RTM pancakes but I don't know if the 1" tapes are the same. Some 2" tapes use 6 screws on a different radius to the 1/4" version so the flanges aren't easy to interchange. The screws are UNC 6-32 and need to be 5/8" long for half inch tapes so presumably 1 1/8" for 1" tapes. Alternatively, you could use longer barrel nuts instead of longer screws. I've often found the Ampex barrel nuts to be fragile.

 

[tedsorvino]

Thanks for the really useful info. Aparently 1’’ e screw pancakes are exactly the same radius (checked it).
Here’s a photo of the screw-barrel set from a 1’’ ampex reel. No exact dimension given.

 

[AnalogApples]

I own reels of SM911, Quantegy 456, and ATR master tape, all 1" The ATR was my first new tape purchase. I let my house get up to 70% humidity and the ATR started shedding. I'll never buy ATR tape again. They have a disclaimer about not letting it get above 50%(?). My SM911 RTM tape has been reliable and not sensitive to humidity like the ATR.