Old Tascam 4-track

[Whoopysnorp]

Back in the old days (high school, which ended for me about two and a half years ago), I tracked onto a Tascam 22-4, which is a quarter-inch reel-to-reel machine. We're talking 1983's home recording technology, here. I logged many happy hours in front of that machine with a razor blade and splicing tape while all my friends were out going to dances and getting laid (I assume)...anyway, I've now moved on to the DAW world. Now that I have a good sound card in my machine (Delta 66), I figured it was time to archive some stuff before the Radio Shack tape I used disintegrates. My dad also has some stuff he wants archived from his electronic music days (sadly, his magnum opus Poultry In Motion is on half-inch tape and thus inaccessible to any of us). That stuff is pretty touch and go; I think it's Ampex tape. Here's the problem--toward the end of a reel, the speed of the machine drops severely, to the point of stopping completely on one of the older tapes. It slows down with the newer stuff as well, though I didn't bother to check whether it'd stop totally. My dad and I have been aware for a while that when rewinding an old tape, you'll see a drastic reduction in speed towards the end. He had it serviced, and was very frustrated to discover it still happened, though he rested easier when he found out new tape didn't cause that problem. I'm wondering if these problems could be related, and if so, what can I do about them? I had some success by manually keeping the reel up to speed on a particular section, and then rewinding it and playing it normally with no assistance.

 

[A Reel Person]

As you may have assumed,...

the tape is causing most of this drag, and slow down of the reels.

This happens mostly with older Ampex reels, but is not limited strictly to that. Newer Quantegy reels may do this too,... as Quantegy is the old Ampex company, under a new name.

In general, if the tape's not too far gone, you may fast wind the tape several times, to loosen it up, then it should play normally. Inspect the head and tape path between winds, and clean if necessary, and it will be necessary.

Not only does the tape decompose, and deposit more oxide on the head and tape path, which creates drag, but the tape actually sticks to itself, on the reel.

Several fast winds of the tape should help, but not cure this problem. Also, a proper adjustment of the reel-torque circuit should "juice" up the current enough to spin the reels properly, but to the best of my knowledge, the 22-4 does not have reel-torque adjustment, that's just based on what I know about the Tascam 38, 34 and 32.

F/I, proper reel torque adjustment [being adjusted up], should be able to cure this problem, but the 22-4 has no reel-torque adjustment, which is why when your dad had the unit serviced, it came back with the same problem.

In this case, with the 22-4, you're down to only using fast-winds to loosen the tape, and nothing else,... but praying [I guess].

 

[A Reel Person]

Oh yeah, BTW,...

Buying new reels of tape will help a lot. Brand new Quantegy tape should be fine, but Quantegy has this sticky-shedding problem, after the reels get older, especially if you live in a more humid climate.

You may consider switching to 3M 226, or BASF 911, both of which do not develop this sticky problem, like Ampex/Quantegy, but are basically Ampex/Quantegy 456 compatible.

 

[Whoopysnorp]

Thanks a lot, Reel Person. I'll definitely try that. I myself have left the cheap analog world behind me, so I'm no longer in the market for tape...just HD space and CD-Rs.

 

[overseas]

Or...

...you could try baking the tape. I'm not joking! This proceedure actually works. Try this link for more information: www.tangible-technology.net

There is also a thread on this very subject over on the tascam website (www.tascam.com). Hold your mouse over "Support," then click on online forums. Scroll down to the last forum and click on it. You'll see the thread on baking tapes..

I think A Reel Person would know about doing this.

Bruce

 

[A Reel Person]

I've heard of the tape baking thing.

There's some info on this, in various posts, on www.tascambbs.com

I've never done it, but some people have baked tapes, and been fairly successful at somewhat resurrecting some otherwise unusable tapes.

Also, if you search Tascambbs>Analog, you may find some links to some outside reference on baking tapes... and possibly some here on HRcom.

I've never baked a tape, never needed to, and hope I never have to, but I doubt I will. Even my worst, 20 year old reel, only has a modest amount of stickiness and decomposition.

In more humid parts of the country, the sticky decomposition of tape gets quite bad, indeed. Ampex is probably most prone to this problem, but it's not necessarily limited to Ampex tape, depending on who you ask.