Pardon the Interruption

[ceved]

In yet another demonstration of my stupidity, I purchased what I thought was three low torque 7 1/2" reels on Ebay.
It turns out that I bought three lots of 10.
If you were kicking yourself for missing the boat, drop me a line as I cannot fathom what I will do with 30 of these things.
Perhaps I can help ease your pain.

[Ben]

You could sell me a about a dozen. Trust me if you buy any tapes of
ebay the reels will come in handy as I would say 1/4 of the reels are warped.
The other thing I found is good tapes with questionable plastic raw stock.
About every 3 feet? a bend or brittle section than makes the tape unplayable
over the poor segment of tape.

[ironbut]

Ha ha,.. I was wondering who bought the rest of those things! I got 20 and to be honest, they were so cheap that I can see how you thought you were buying singles. They ain't perfect but they seem to be just fine to replace bad reels.
 Ben. One thing you might try to keep your 7" reels from scraping (flanging),.. if it's always on the outer part of the reel, you might adjust it the take up side a little farther out (is it shims/spacers on the Otari?). I have that problem with my Technics if I adjust the take up side dead center. I think that some reels are just made a little thinner so the outside flange rubs. If you have any of those awful gray reels that Columbia tapes are often on, I'd replace those just because they're a pain to thread and those reels are very prone to warping. I don't like the fact that you can't see the tape wraps/condition either.

[Ben]

I'd seen them, but I wondered about how they would have been shipped.
I am glad they came in OK.  Most of the warped reels, have both flanges
go wide and then narrow and back to normal.
Most of the time buying off ebay , they talk about the box but not the tape.
I just picked up The Sandpipers and music is still good, but I lost the 1st song
and the last 1/3 of the last song do to tape breakage, due to a poor plastic base stock. ( 3 3/4 IPS). I am finding more music from the old albums that is interesting
than say a CD with the Greatest hits of XYZ. Both Yesterday and
Michelle were done in Spanish rather than English which was nice. Then often you
will find a single that you love but never expect like Inch worm.