Tape Project Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Teeg on June 26, 2010, 09:37:40 AM
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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/ (http://www.sonicraft.com/)
Tj
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Nice Tj!
That's gotta be a "field trip to heaven" in my book.
Steve is equally generous in the advice he gives on the Ampex list and you can tell from his comments that it all comes from first hand experience.
Being on the opposite coast, I'm green with envy.
BTW, did he have a Phatzilla there?
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There is an article on his site about the rebuild of Phatzilla, and it was in the studio as well. Its BIG! Like all of the other machines it is in unbelievably great condition. And being an Ampex guy, I had to ogle the MR-70.
I mentioned having tape path difficulties with my Studer A80, so Steve had one of his engineers spool up a reel on their unit for a demo of how to do it easier. Its one thing for someone to tell you how to do something, but getting a live demonstration is priceless.
Those guys are a class act.....
Tj
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Very cool :-)