Posted on 01/13/2017 9:52:37 PM PST by nickcarraway
I agree completely. So many of these R&B acts are treated as icons, but in reality make music that is virtually un-listeable or mediocre. Look at James Brown, for example. Or Sly Stone. Or even BB King.
I was looking to see if someone posted exactly what you posted. The story makes no sense. Even if one of the reels was seated incorrectly on the deck, and even if the wrong button was FF or RW, which is the only likely possibility, and even if for some reason one of the reels jammed somehow and the other went flying somehow, there would be a pretty easy fix on any product - one repair if that.
Remember how we used to do loops, after all, with your buddy down the hall, a pencil and the “mobius” reel?
LOL I still have my Otaris.
Strange... Why would big stars use such poor quality tape? Ampex 456 in 1/4” was the thinner tape we used but it was tough stuff and I know they made that tape in reels as big and expensive as 2”. (Right?) I never worked with it but I saw the reels... I never touched the cheap stretchy crap that came from the ad agencies, etc. Why would a “rock star’s” engineer?
I still have reels of 400 with bloopers and programming. Now if I could just find a working Ampex quad machine....
Wilson Pickett - I Found A True Love, Mono 1968 Atlantic 45 record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP3tSZxIeA8
Wilson Pickett - Silver Bells
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u3iCoolJEE
Yes, I remember that old magnetic tape could go brittle, but I’ve never seen it break like glass, which is what the author seems to be claiming.
Perhaps the tape snapped when the make-up feel fell off the spindle. That would have required a single splice to fix.
I think someone’s exaggerating.
Should say, take-up reel.
Darn autocorrect!
Exactly. I figure one break at most in that scenario. An easy fix for any competent engineer.
Somebody's exaggerating the hell out of that story.
Interesting that you’ve got working tape decks at all. Most consumer grade machines that I’ve run across in recent years are kaput.
Most cassette tapes you find are also too degraded to play, unless they’ve been kept in a secure box of some type. I’ve got 25 year old session copies that still play alright, but I no longer have a decent playback machine.
I had most of them transferred to CD a few years ago to preserve my work.
.
Its not the cassettes themselves that are degraded, its the capstan wheel whose rubber has oxidized to the point that the tape sticks to them, thus destroying the tape if you attempt to play it.
.
Just amazing. They've got themselves convinced that Trump is going to deport every immigrant (legal or not), reinstitute Jim Crow, revoke all environmental laws and regulations, shut down the mainstream press, roll back the whole gay agenda, secretly enrich himself and his companies, and open up every square inch of federal lands to the evil oil companies. And for good measure, he may even lock up all his critics on the left.
They're suffering from self induced mass hysteria.
I do a lot of books on tape when I travel. Get them at Half Price Books for $2.99, only get unabridged ones.
Is that actual cassette tape?
The closest I’ve come is seeing 1/4” on a machine with a run away reel motor that got stuck in FF or RW whipping itself into a few small pieces. But it involved a highly unusual combination of factors. Repairing it only involved a razor blade for the purpose of trimming the edges of the splice, though, the pieces were just stuck together in whatever irregular shape the break left them in.
But, yeah, no shattering. The author’s padding the story.
Quadtapexfer.com
In quad videotape, Ampex once made a machine that used a vacuum column to handle tensioning. It used a series of light bulbs opposite photo cells to keep track of how far the tape had been sucked into the column. When one of the light bulbs burned out, the machine’s logic would freak out and put the feed reel into rewind and the takeup reel into fast forward. You’d be sitting there minding your own business, then suddenly hear the motors torque up, followed by a loud snap as the tape got pulled tight against the spinning quad heads and cut in half.
It only took us a couple of those experiences before we replaced the light bulbs with LEDs.
Thanks, I didn’t think any of these machines were still around. I have some awesome outtakes from the old Dallas TV show. Larry Hagman was the master when it comes to breaking up the crew. It’s on the same reel with Sam Donaldson getting thrown out of the White House. Priceless stuff.
I second this. Outstanding documentary!
My oldest, now a senior in college, has many stories like these from the days following the election. Hysterically funny, but sad as well. He just laughs at the people.
He was once called the “token conservative” by one of his profs and just laughed at her.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.