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Messages - USR

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Raw Tape / Availability of Open Reel Tape and Needful Things
« on: March 23, 2013, 08:33:22 AM »
Hello!

There's a lot of questions about the future of open reel recording. When someone asks "How many years will there be tape available?" there's no good answer.  It could all go away in ten years, five years, or next year. I don't know. The real problem lies in the volume of tape being sold. As the volume shrinks there's more and more pressure on the tape makers to increase their prices because the chemicals and film they need to buy is constantly going up. When the prices go up on the tape, less people buy it and the cycle continues. 

We narrowly averted a real problem last year when the one place that makes USA flanges decided to not make them anymore. This is the same place that ATR and RMGI get their flanges. After a lot of pressure they decided to continue making them (Paul S knows who we're talking about) but the prices went waaaay up. Luckily we can still get quality alloy flanges or we'll end up all learning how to use pancakes.

The last we heard from RMGI, and this is what they told us, Pyral in France is gearing up to make SM900 for the first time in quite a while and their LPR35 stock is actually in production. This is a good sign for tape users.  ATR tape has spotty availability due to lack of supply. I guess that's better than making pallets of tape that sit there, but the ATR tape is very good.

What do you think is the years left in people actually recording onto tape?

USR


2
Raw Tape / Re: Quantegy 406 Reel to Reel Tape
« on: March 23, 2013, 08:17:47 AM »
If you trash the tape at least keep the reels!

3
Raw Tape / Re: RMGI Tape orientation
« on: March 23, 2013, 08:16:50 AM »
You'd be surprised how many newbies are thrown off by the back coating to the point they twist the tape to record on the back coating. Then they complain that it sounds really bad. I remember as a kid though with my 3" battery powered Hong Kong recorder that the issue of what is the oxide side came up quite a bit considering the stack of 3" reels thrown in a box some wound proper, some not. Open reel tape was even expensive then, at 97 cents for a roll!

4
Raw Tape / Re: Mystery tape.
« on: March 23, 2013, 08:12:06 AM »
Seems it could be Agfa tape then, but who knows. Someone, maybe Agfa, used to mark their tape here and there along its length but by far most tape wasn't marked. It seems the general but faulty practice is to assume the tape on the reel is the same as what's labeled on the box. I used to have a book with one foot sections of tapes of all kinds in it as a guide because this question used to come up quite a bit. The only problem, a major flaw, was that companies like Quantegy changed their oxides a lot and that pretty much blew the idea of, for instance, 456 always looking the same.

But in recent years, RMGI and ATR seem to have settled in on at least what their tape looks like. Then there's the Russian tape....

Have a great day!

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