Mono vs. stereo reel-to-reel

[nss]

I'm thinking of picking up one of the recent vintage Akai GX reel to
reel decks to play around with, and hopefully use it to play back some
old family tapes (50 years old!) for digitization.

These old tapes were recorded I believe in mono. Will there be any issue
trying to play these on a modern stereo reel to reel deck, like say a
GX-635D? Its been a long time since I've played with reel to reel, and I
can't recall if there is an issue with track placement with old mono vs.
current (well, relatively current!) stereo heads/recordings.

Thanks!

NSS

[Steve Stone]

It should work.

Your mono tapes are probably half track format. The newer quarter track unit
can effectively play both sides at the same time, one channel forward, one
backward. If both are at the same speed you can record both sides at once
and split them apart into separate tracks after recording to the hard drive
with software like goldwave that will allow you to reverse the backwards
track saving a bunch of time.

Other issues might be:
brittle acetate tape backing causing tape breaks, oxide shedding, tape
lubricant dried out causing tape squeal,
bleed over due to tight tape wind in storage. You might loose a little bit
of freq response playing half track tapes on quarter track units. Treat the
old tape gently.


"nss" > wrote in message
...
> I'm thinking of picking up one of the recent vintage Akai GX reel to reel
> decks to play around with, and hopefully use it to play back some old
> family tapes (50 years old!) for digitization.
>
> These old tapes were recorded I believe in mono. Will there be any issue
> trying to play these on a modern stereo reel to reel deck, like say a
> GX-635D? Its been a long time since I've played with reel to reel, and I
> can't recall if there is an issue with track placement with old mono vs.
> current (well, relatively current!) stereo heads/recordings.
>
> Thanks!
>
> NSS

[nss]

Steve Stone wrote:
> It should work.
>
> Your mono tapes are probably half track format. The newer quarter track unit
> can effectively play both sides at the same time, one channel forward, one
> backward. If both are at the same speed you can record both sides at once
> and split them apart into separate tracks after recording to the hard drive
> with software like goldwave that will allow you to reverse the backwards
> track saving a bunch of time.
>
> Other issues might be:
> brittle acetate tape backing causing tape breaks, oxide shedding, tape
> lubricant dried out causing tape squeal,
> bleed over due to tight tape wind in storage. You might loose a little bit
> of freq response playing half track tapes on quarter track units. Treat the
> old tape gently.
>

Thanks very much. I suspected there would be track issues such as this,
but doing what you say would be no problem - I've played around with
Goldwave before.

The tapes were in surprisingly good shape the last time I checked them,
but I will undoubtedly need to be careful with them. I copied them to
cassette many years ago, but I'd like to get a higher quality dupe of
them if possible, for digital archiving.

Hearing yourself on a tape as a young child, and other long gone family
members as well, is a curious and special thing. For some reason audio
recordings of this sort always seem more magical than film or video,
perhaps because you are forced to listen carefully and fill in the
visual images mentally. I've recorded my own children every few years,
some in 'interview' form, others just turning the recorder on in the
background to record incidental conversations, and I've been glad I did
as I listen to the old ones today...

NSS