Can we finally put Reel to Reel out of its misery? Put it to rest people.

That Analogplanet surely looks like the place to send your R2R to. Those guys seem to be serious. Impressive, at least to an amateur.

cleeds,

I agree, but do notice that tapes were not backed up to another tape but to entirely different (even allegedly inferior) format. That is saying something.

Maybe 10 years ago, a few more or less, I asked a person at the radio station to copy a reel of tape with some of the music my friends made in high school (pure nostalgia, nothing spectacular). Basically, to transfer the only existing record of that into some other format.

"Great, you came at the last moment. If you came five years from now, I probably could not do it. We have transferred all that we have into digital just in case and tape machines have been dying in the process. We have only one that is good now."

Sure, he could have them fixed, but it seems that they had, more or less, abandoned the format. By the way, it is a well-funded and quite serious radio station. Not a garage project.

glupson

... notice that tapes were not backed up to another tape but to entirely different (even allegedly inferior) format. That is saying something

Backing up the tapes to digital makes perfect sense, because dubbing them onto another reel will only add noise.

Maybe 10 years ago ... I asked a person at the radio station to copy a reel of tape ... "Great, you came at the last moment. If you came five years from now, I probably could not do it. We have transferred all that we have into digital ... "

...  it seems that they had, more or less, abandoned the format. By the way, it is a well-funded and quite serious radio station.

In the US, broadcasting is a business, even for non-commercial stations. Analog tape is an inefficient, expensive, cumbersome format for radio, so of course most stations abandoned reel-to-reel. The industry has also mostly abandoned cart machines (remember them?) and analog tape for phone delay.

cleeds,

I agree with, pretty much, everything you say. However, my points were aiming at the fact argued along this thread that R2R is thriving and not dying. Even the Italian poster’s informative description of revamped machines shows the opposite is happening. They redid their machines only to make more viable back-up.

For a handful of enthusiasts, R2R may be the best thing ever and there is no arguing about its merits but, as a format in general, it has deceased some decades ago. All of the references about parts involve eBay. Proof that it is great is a picture, or two, of a description of specific tapes from more than thirty years ago. It is, in fact, defunct on any significant scale. Together with a dial phone.

Nothing to do with R2R, but the radio station I was mentioning was non-USA located, completely non-commercial with, seemingly, unlimited resources to waste. To the dismay of local crowd that is forced to fund it, but that is a different topic altogether. They, to this day, have occasional orchestra performances in the studio. Just for the heck of it. Speaking of (in)convenience.

As a small interesting piece, a person who signed off (who signed the arrival of it to the record company and was eventually a responsible "editor") on one of the topoxforddoc’s reels of tape has a story to tell...

"Despot attended recording sessions of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (London, 1967), Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed (London, 1969), Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma (London, 1969) and Arsen Dedić’s Homo volans (Zagreb, 1973)."