Quantegy / Ampex 456 1/2 inch

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novocane99

New member
Hi folks,

Presuming no-one makes quantegy 456 anymore, any NOS out there? or different brands which are identical? My TSR-8 is setup for 456 and i love the sound of that tape, tried GP9 in the past and didnt like as much

Cheers
 
Most, if not all of the Ampex is shot. Sticky shed. I myself had two brand new old stock reels in sealed plastic. Even those went sticky and got reassigned to the trash.

Boxes and reels were the only thing worth keeping.

The consensus is……. if you have some of it that has recordings in it…. Bake it and quickly transfer the tracks into your daw.

But never use it to record on.


It’s best to recalibrate your deck to the new tapes that are available.
 
Yep - now is the time to dub these old tapes, then standardise on what you can actually get, and realign to it. I have gone with what I can get from Thomann - and it was really pretty close. I didn't need to bake anything - but a forward then rewind cycle to check for 'stickage' left quite a bit of crud - so I did that, then a good clean for every old tape. Then they're now digits on a hard drive. 40 year old tape is just beyond normal storage now I fear. I doubt any brand ever expected they'd be ever used after this long.
 
Just to broaden your options, what didn’t you like about the GP9? Did you set the bias for that tape when you tried it?
 
I just went through 8 reels of 456. Older material, older reels, 2 reels unused in plastic but have been stored for years. They all ranged from complete shred/shed to the NOS being frozen/stuck together unusable. The weather is wonky in Texas, and these were not airtight, but only the AGFA PEM 469 survived the storage. The 911 I have is still sounding excellent.
 
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