EQ Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 46)

MIX BUS THE SECRETS OF HOME TAPE BAKING by Jonathan Stars About four years ago, I pulled one of my 20-year-old reel-to-reel tapes off the shelf to do a remix. As it played, I was surprised at the loss of high end, which got noticeably worse during the course of the threeminute song. I cleaned the heads, and was shocked to find the cotton swab covered in what looked like pepper (see Figure 1). Scared s**tless of ruining the only documentation I had of these ancient sessions, I decided to do what any reasonable remixer would do: Take an 8input interface, and transfer the eight tracks from my tape into the computer in one pass. But as I started the transfers, it seemed I could only play about one minute of any song before I had to stop and clean the tape heads. Otherwise, I could actually see the onscreen waveform grow weaker. It wasn’t too hard to take the oneminute slices of audio, and combine them back into a whole song, but it was tedious. If you don’t match up the waveforms just right, you risk getting a click where the audio pieces connect. And a 20-minute tape requires 20 head cleanings. With hundreds of tapes, just the thought of it made me want to take a nap. But what else could I do? A QUICK EXPERIMENT I knew about tape baking from an article I read about a convection oven method used by the engineers at Ampex, but I certainly couldn’t afford to rent time on one of those babies—let alone buy one. I also read about a method using a plate warmer—something apparently used in high-class European households—but, then again, those units are a bit expensive. Fortunately, a friend told me about a food dehydrator he had been using to bake his tapes. I had my doubts, but I was willing to give it a try. Following his instructions, I put the tapes on the shelves of As I was skeptical about this process, I conducted this experiment with some tapes I didn’t care much about. Before baking, I verified that the tape stuck to the heads of my machine, and that the audio sounded terrible within the course of a few minutes. After the four-hour-long process, I slapped it back on the machine. It sounded great! Not only that, but after playing the tape throughout the entire reel, the heads were still clean. WHAT’S GOING ON? It’s called sticky shed syndrome. Your tapes are made of iron oxide, and a backing. The iron oxide is mixed with glue that makes it stick to the backing. It turns out that, over time, the glue absorbs moisture and gets gooey. There are many variations of how this might affect your precious tapes. I had nearly every symptom there is. Some tapes turned gummy, and I could see shiny, sticky patches on the surface. As Fig. 1: Tape sheddings on the end of a Q-tip. the dehydrator, set the machine to 120–135 degrees for two hours, and made sure to turn the tapes every half hour. Afterwards, I let them cool for two hours before playing them. Fig. 2: The Nesco American Harvest Snackmaster Pro FD-50 Food Dehydrator. Note the adjustable black wheel. For more on The Secrets of Home Tape Baking, go to www.eqtv.com. EQTV.com 46 EQ MARCH 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqtv.com http://www.eqtv.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - March 2008

EQ Magazine - March 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Tool Box Dream Theater Nick Drake LO-FI Recording Tricks Guitar Trax Bass Managment Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Tascam Gigastudio 4 Cakewalk Sonar 7 Crane Song Avocet Cad Signature Series Mic Packs Waves GTR3 Kjaerhus MPL-1 Pro SE Ableton Live 7 Centrance Micport Pro, Tapco LINK.midi 4x4, Multi-Gigabyte USB 2.0 Memory Sticks Digital Redux Electrotech, Nine Volt Audio Action Drums, Big Fish Audio Hadeeth 2 Room with a VU

EQ Magazine - March 2008

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