MRL tape for Fostex G16 and Model 80?

[WarmJetGuitar]

Hey guys!

I'm sorry if you had similar questions too many times before but can anyone enlight me on which MRL test tapes I need for a Fostex G16 (half inch) and a Fostex Model 80?
Any good places to buy them from new?

At the moment they both sound fine but I fear the day a mechanic breakdown or headwear might force us to work on another machine. Additionally I dig the heavily saturated sound using an old tape like AGFA PE36 on a machine that was made for modern tapes and want the ability to oversature even when +6 or +9 tapes.

How important is a scope? I'm considering just using the computer for sending the test tones in the first place.

 

[miroslav]

Did you check with MRL? MRL Calibration Tapes

31J329 is the MRL catalog number from back when the G-16 first came out....I have one of those test tapes, and also a few of the OEM Fostex test tapes I picked up on eBay, (which are all "sticky" so I don't use them).
Not sure if MRL still makes that catalog number which uses the odd 320 nWb/m Ref Fluxivity level, but I'm sure they make one that will work on the G-16.

I don't you will be able to get enough signal on the G-16 to saturate a +9 tape....not sure about the 80.

<EDIT>
http://home.comcast.net/~mrltapes/pub101.pdf (Right column under G320) 31J329a
Looks like they still make/have them....it's just that that "a" version uses "0" and not -10dB like the older catalog....so you would have to account for that when calibrating, since the G-16 is a -10 deck.

 

[Blue Jinn]

jrf magnetics. Not sure what shipping would run you. It cost a fortune to send a case of tape to a guy in Canada, and was a lot cheaper to send to a place just across the border in NY for him to pickup. Go figure, so much for NAFTA, anyway I digress....

They sell MRL tapes. They also have an easier to read table of what is on what tape, what reference level and eq you're buying. Somewhere I have an email for what they recommended for the model 80, it may have been a jack of all trades 1/4" But check this out:

MRL Alignment Tapes from JRF

 

[toddyjoe]

The calibration tape I use for my Fostex R8 was an MRL tape I bought new from Full Compass online. The selling price at Full Compass was cheaper than some of the other MRL dealers I found. MRL tapes have full-width tones so you do not need to find one specific for an 8-track versus a 4-track or anything like that. Simply pick a 1/4" and a 1/2" MRL tape with your desired reference level and EQ standard (NAB, IEC, etc.) and you are ready to go.

An oscilloscope is mostly used for head-alignment portion of calibration, specifically adjusting azimuth for phase alignment between the tracks. To be honest, there are a bunch of oscilloscope computer programs out there nowadays (some of which are free) that work just as well. The last few times I did an alignment I simply used an oscilloscope program as my laptop was already up and running for to do frequency sweeps and the like. I think the program I used is an old freeware Windows program called Spectra Scope. It might still be online somewhere.

 

[WarmJetGuitar]

Thanks for all the valuable advice!

Would I be able to calibrate myself with the advice from this website and the TapeOp article or should I try to get some guy to show me IRL? There's a guy in town being quite an expert in Fostex-machines but he's hard to reach and semi-retired as he's pretty old.