Quinton Tape Review

[astrotoy]

I recently received my first (and at this point only) Quinton Tape. It arrived shortly before Christmas and is the Sabina Hank Blue Moments title. I ordered it with the same spec as the TP tapes - 15 ips, 1/4 inch, 2 track, CCIE EQ. You can order 7.5 ips and/or NAB EQ. Shorter tape is cheaper.  It is a bit difficult to determine from the write up which is all in German the exact dubbing process. They mention Studer and Telefunken equipment It has really great sound. Sabina Hank is an Austrian jazz vocalist and plays with a trio - similar in many ways to Jacqui Naylor. The instruments are all acoustic - piano, bass and percussion. None of them appear to have quite the chops of Jacqui's trio. The album which is all sung in English - with no discernible accent, is a mix of a few standards - "For all we Know" is my favorite in the album, along with "Caravan" and "On the Street Where You Live" along with quite few songs that Hank has apparently written. Again, difficult to decifer the German. The album was recorded in 2001 when she was in her mid 20's. Bio information is in the German Wikipedia. I am not a jazz person, but the album for me was very enjoyable - she has a really good voice. You can sample some of the tape on the Quinton website. I listened to samples of the other dozen or so tapes that are available and none of the others struck my fancy. They appear to be local artists in Germany or Austria - all jazz or pop. 

Now for a few comments.  Tape packaging is pretty nice - not the same level as the TP. Two separate 10.5 in tape were used - SM468 tape, sames as the TP. I'm guessing the total length of the album is around 45 minutes or so.  The perspective is very close - the piano and percussion images are huge - spreading to both sides of center - where Sabina and the bass are located. However, Hanks' voice is not sibilant or very breathy.  There is a certificate in the album which apparently states that a limit of 50 copies for each of the tapes. I got number 47 of this album. Each tape seems to be copied one by one on order to the specifications of the orderer. There appears to be one main person who does the copying, Tom, whom I think one email said he is a student - and it is a part time activity. So my major issue was that I ordered and paid for the tape back in June or July and it took several emails to finally get my tape made (on December 9th) and sent off to me. I also had to pay in euros - which meant having a bank transfer - no credit cards are accepted. At one point I was thinking that my 164 Euros were gone.

At this point Quinton appears to be the only other entitiy that is making tapes similar to TP. They are not really trying to compete with TP - having only local artists recorded in Germany or Austria. If they only make 50 of each title, then there may not be an opportunity to even get the Sabina Hank title. BTW, I first heard parts of the Sabina Hank tape when Phillip O'Handlon played it on his Arian Jensen modded PR99 at a demo I attended.

I know we had one of the principals of Quinton as part of the group maybe a year ago. I couldn't find his comments. If he sees this, maybe he can comment on my thoughts.  Again, a very enjoyable tape of fine sonic quality.  Larry

[TomR]

Larry, thanks for this! I have been wondering about the Quinton tapes. It would help to enlarge the tape market if there were another successful producer out there.  I haven't seriously considered them, though - unknown artists, and they don't seem to be easy to do business with.

[joeljoel1947]

Hi Larry,
I remember reading long ago that those Quinton tapes were all digital sourced.  Can't find where I read that now, and I can't find the original Quinton thread here on TP which is where I think I saw that mentioned.  Am I "misremembering?"

[xcortes]

Am I "misremembering?"

No. You're not. There was a long thread in this forum where the Quinton guy said that some of the tapes were from digital sources and some from analog sources, and that all remastering was done on the analog domain. He even said something like "digital has gone a long way". At certain point in time the thread was deleted.

I have the Quintons. However it is clear that Doc et al don't want them discussed here (and this is their space) so please refer to my review at the AA. FWIW I just ordered the two albums that were released after my original purchase but haven't received them yet.

[docb]

The reason for the thread deletion was that it was drifting from general inquiry about the Quinton tape albums to more or less an advertisement for Quinton tapes - how to order, pricing, etc. My feeling is that a business presents the best impression by publishing that kind of information on their own website and forum - which is, obviously, part of the reason we operate this forum and the Bottlehead Forum. For what it's worth, here is a link to the Quinton forum. Perhaps it will be activated in the future:

http://www.quintonrecords.com/producer/forum.htm

[joeljoel1947]

Thanks for the clearing that up guys.

[xcortes]

Perhaps it will be activated in the future

Sometimes I really love your sarcasm.

[astrotoy]

Doc, sorry if my post is a problem. Please feel free to delete it as you see fit.  I didn't remember that the original Quinton thread had moved into the commercial area. I did want our members to understand that despite the sound quality of the one tape I have, there appear to be significant issues with the order fulfillment side of their operation at the present time.  Larry

[docb]

Hi Larry,

Your post is not a problem. It's in the right category and on-topic. As I said, my choice of removing the past thread was because I felt the representative from Quinton was taking a bit too much liberty in posting detailed ordering info for his products on our forum rather than simply posting a link to his own web site and offering to shift more detailed discussion about the acquisition of his products to his web site.

For many, web sites are considered somewhat as a minor detail and minor expense of running a business. However for me it is a major investment. We spend several thousand dollars a year on servers and software licenses and a large time investment on website development and maintenance. And we have developed a pretty good volume of traffic considering the niche market that we work in. So while I strongly support the offering of this venue for the sharing of knowledge in this niche hobby - including listing resources for tapes made by others - I am rather protective of others gaining direct commercial benefit from our investment in web presence without helping to pay for it.

I hope that folks take this in the tone in which it is intended. I'm not trying to cut out any competition. In fact I think TP would benefit from more offerings by competitors, since it would help this new niche in high end audio to grow faster without placing the entire burden of delivering enough source material to convince someone to invest in a tape playback setup upon us. Certainly Bottlehead has benefited from having competitors in the tube audio kit market over the years.

[Grant99]

there appear to be significant issues with the order fulfillment side of their operation at the present time.  Larry

Hi Larry, just to give my 2 cents here...I ordered the set of Quinton taps last spring...from the time I initiated the money transfer I received the entire set of tapes in about 3 weeks.  1 week of this was shipping time.  So in my experience it was pretty reasonable, but perhaps they now have production issues, don't know.  Also, my copy of Sabina Hank's tape also has the same number 47 on it, so I don't think this indicates an actual "serial number", but like you my expertise of the German language is limited....

regards
Grant

[astrotoy]

Grant, thanks for the info.  I think Xavier also ordered earlier last year and got his tapes pretty quickly. I had to send several emails to them to get the order fulfilled. Always a pleasant response but no action for 6 months. It appears to me to very much a cottage industry at this point.  As far as the serial number 47, it looks hand written to me on the booklet that came with the tape. So I am surprised that it is the same for yours. Larry

[audioblazers]

I ordered all 9 tapes . It was shipped within a month . Unfortunately packaging leaves much to be desire damaging the cover of 3 tapes ( shipped in 2 packages). Credit to the President of aaanolge.de , Rainier, for his generosity in sending me replacement cover. Quality of cover  is not comparable to tapeproject. Unfortunately for me price of tape was increase before I purchase. I suppose the review by albert porter for positive feedback certainly increase their visibility and the effect for consumers is increase in price for the album