What the heck! Where are the tapes?
As we reach the halfway point of this first year of the Tape Project, It's time to clarify that we have not absconded your subscription funds and made our way to Argentina to start a girl-on-girl porn site. I think it's our obligation to give you all a breakdown of the various parts of the project we have pulled together and where the last few details stand-
We have acquired six album licenses and have four more in the works. These come through when they are ready to come through, so it's a little hard to say with exactitude when they will be announced. But it will be soon. We are working hard on this aspect and have several pretty exciting titles from several different labels in the works. I wish I could tell you which titles we are working on, but unfortunately the nature of the business is that we don't want other labels bidding for the same titles against us and therefore we need to keep the titles under wraps until we have a contract.
Our duplicating line is together and tested. This involved getting two Ampex ATR 100s resurrected from the dead and getting them slaved together with two other ATRs, which are all fed from a Ampex MM1200 converted to 1" two track. Some changes are happening at 1340 Mission, and one of those changes is that we have been able to establish a dedicated duplicating room right in the facility. This will allow us super tight quality control and easy access between the mastering room where the running masters are made and the duping room where they are being copied.
I have put together a high quality inkjet-on-art-paper printing setup for the cover art. The art we have licensed is all in the final stages of workup and we will begin printing as soon as the final changes are signed off. It will come in the form of a four page bookfold 10.5" square and will contain the original art plus additional information about the tape making process and any additional material we can acquire from the licensor. We are working with Brad Talbott on this aspect. Brad is the graphics talent behind our awesome logo.
We have purchased a large quantity of pancakes of RMGI SM468 tape for production of the tapes.
We have received many subscriptions from those who have put faith in us early on and we GREATLY appreciate the support. This project is an expensive undertaking which we have poured a lot of our own money into. Your subscription money goes to tape, reels, packaging and licenses for the music - the actual stuff you get for your subsciption. The duping facility, the shows, the website, this forum, Paul's personal trainer, Michael's hairdresser, the corporate jet - those are all things we pay for out of our pocket at this point.
OK so what's still to be done?
First and foremost we are hung up for a few more weeks awaiting our reels. These are going to be ultra cool. If you haven't noticed I will point out that the tape reel in our logo has a very unique set of holes in it, a circle, a square and a triangle. That is in fact our trademark and we are having custom tooling made to punch that pattern in your reel flanges. The tooling takes a couple of months to be manufactured and then it takes a little additional time to punch the flanges. It took us several months just to get a reply from the two places left that can do this, and as soon as we got the quote we got things started. It's all in process at this point and it looks like about five weeks to go.
The other hang up has been packaging. We want the packaging for these tapes to be worthy of the contents. This has required a trial and error process of coming up with a sturdy and at the same time elegant package. The first attempt made late last year - a book fold type box for two - literally fell apart under the weight of two 10" reels full of tape. At one point I went off looking for custom wood boxes. The pricing caused my heart to skip a few beats. Back to the drawing board and we came up with more traditional tape storage boxes and a slipcover to contain them, both done in very attractive finishes. The finished product is intended to look like a tooled leather book on your shelf, and we are hoping to see the final production complete just about the same time as the reels.
In the meantime we are going to make some alignment tapes for subscribers and ship them out, so that you can have your tape machine dialed in to as close a match as possible to our duplicating slaves when those first tapes show up.
We will also be assigning serial numbers to charter subscribers. These will be assigned from lowest to highest in the order the subscriptions have been received starting at number 21. Watch for a certificate to come in the mail with your number in the next week or two.
Another topic of discussion amongst Paul, Michael and myself has been doing a little demo for subscribers at the studio in San Francisco. If enough subscribers and potential subscribers think they might be able to make it we would be happy to schedule a little taste of what is to come. My next trip south will be in early July. Perhaps if folks are interested we could schedule a little afternoon or evening demo around that time.
Once again thank you so much for your subscriptions and support. If you're feeling a little itchy about getting some tapes, know that we are too. Feel free to call me and kvetch, talk tech, offer title suggestions or whatever else might be necessary to burn off a little pent up energy when you're jonesing for those tapes. We are getting closer every day!