Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few hours over at Steve Puntolillo's Sonicraft A2DX lab. Well-known in the professional music industry, Sonicraft specializes in transferring multitrack analog formats to digital. As their shop is just across town, I dropped Steve a note and asked if a visit would be possible.
My main interest was seeing their 440 machines. An Ampex 440B is my primary two-track playback machine, and while I consider it a decent deck, the guys at Sonicraft have come up with a few mods that take performance to a new level. After seeing theirs in action, I hope to replicate at least a few of those mods on my Ampex's.
Many of their machines are, in fact, extensively modified to provide the best transfer possible. Maintaining all of that gear must be no small task, especially when you consider the array of equipment necessary to support all of the possible tape formats that have been in use. I was amazed by the effort they put out to keep all of their machines impeccably clean, ready to go to work.
Steve was nice enough to take a few hours out of his busy schedule to show me around; you couldn't ask to meet a nicer fellow, especially one who is so knowledgeable about audio tape. I learned quite a bit in that short time, but of course there's always more to cover and I hope to make it back some time.
Anyone who is a big fan of tape will find a wealth of technical info at their site.
http://www.sonicraft.com/ Tj