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3 3/4 IPS reel-to-reel

J

Joey1127

Well-Known Member
Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone has ever had any luck with buying 3 3/4 IPS reel-to-reel tapes from e-bay? I have bought a few now and all of them except for one have serious drop-outs in treble and they tend to fade in and out. However, all of the 7 1/2 ips stuff I bought is fine. The thing is, some of the titles I got were only available on 3 3/4 ips so I'm kinda stuck... Couple of Manilow tapes, Aretha's GOLD, Cat Stevens. The one GOOD title I got was Paul Simon GREATEST HITS...but it still sounds about Cassette quality so not sure that it was even worth it.

If I recored my own tapes at 3 3/4 ips, they sounds GREAT, but trying to buy them pre-recorded seems a lost cause. Seems like I get better sound quality by getting a 10.5" reel of RMGI SM900 and copying the vinyl to tape myself...

Joey1127
 
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The pre-recorded tapes were made in mass, with little concern to the quality of the tape used. Certainly not in the Maxell UD league. Also the care given to the actual recording process was average. You will have much better luck with a good table, good stylus and tweaking the recording levels and bias to your own particular tastes.
 
bohhey said:
The pre-recorded tapes were made in mass, with little concern to the quality of the tape used. Certainly not in the Maxell UD league. Also the care given to the actual recording process was average. You will have much better luck with a good table, good stylus and tweaking the recording levels and bias to your own particular tastes.
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indeed,

As soon as I get your DUAL 601 today, I will start working on that with my fresh stock of RMGI SM900 tape!!!

Thanks,

Joey
 
3.75ips

Does your reel to reel deck have a closed loop transport (2 pinch rollers and usually 2 capstans)? Reason being, prerecorded tapes are not of the studio backcoated variety so many of those who bought the tapes rewound at high speed and stored them incorrectly for years. This usually leads to crinkled edges, bad print through, and dropouts on the tracks closest to the tape edge. A closed loop machine will isolate that part of the tape at the heads and help you get a decent sound. A decent cheap deck for prerecorded tapes is the Sony TC-440 (closed loop, single motor, weird roto-head). I use this deck to play my prerecorded tapes because 1.) the closed loop design and 2.) I can pull off the head cover and EASILY adjust the alignment of the rotohead assembly to give me a good frequency response. I learned this trick when I used to transfer tapes to cd for people. I've heard some good 3.75 tapes and I've heard some horrible ones (Capitol) Good luck.
 
Hi,

I got a few 3 3/4 ips tapes, all of them of the RCA label. Most of them sound just plain normal, but in some cases, the sound is nice and detailed, like in two Toscanini tapes I got. Of course, my own recordings sound better, but the quality of the musicians I could gather on my living room is not on the same league as the ones on the tapes I bought!

All the best
 
The best sounding pre-recorded R2R tapes I heard while growing up were Columbia's @ 7.5 ips. The faster tape speed not only offers more headroom, lower signal to noise ratio and wider bandwidth, it's also closer to the fast duplication speed. However, many tapes from that era were on acetate based binders, which curl and rot with age. Acetate tapes have a semi-transparent pack that's usually amber to green in color. (Hold the reel up to a strong light. Mylar binders aren't semi-transparent.)
 
ppeterso2 said:
Does your reel to reel deck have a closed loop transport (2 pinch rollers and usually 2 capstans)? Reason being, prerecorded tapes are not of the studio backcoated variety so many of those who bought the tapes rewound at high speed and stored them incorrectly for years. This usually leads to crinkled edges, bad print through, and dropouts on the tracks closest to the tape edge. A closed loop machine will isolate that part of the tape at the heads and help you get a decent sound. A decent cheap deck for prerecorded tapes is the Sony TC-440 (closed loop, single motor, weird roto-head). I use this deck to play my prerecorded tapes because 1.) the closed loop design and 2.) I can pull off the head cover and EASILY adjust the alignment of the rotohead assembly to give me a good frequency response. I learned this trick when I used to transfer tapes to cd for people. I've heard some good 3.75 tapes and I've heard some horrible ones (Capitol) Good luck.
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I have a TEAC A-6300 with only one pinch roller. The only tapes I have any issue with are these pre-recorded 3 3/4 IPS ones. I'm gonna say they were not stored correctly during their initial life. All the 3 3/4 IPS I record or the ANY of the 7 1/2 ips sound GREAT so I'm thinking it's just worn out tape.

Joey1127
 
There was a great article about this in Stereophile around 1970... how tape COULD be a superior medium, but the record companies kept downgrading it and forcing tape collectors to buy new equipment or upgrade. First, record companies offered staggered head tapes at 15 IPS, with 2 staggered tracks. Then they went to 7 1/2/2-track "inline". Then it became 7 1/2/4-track. Stereophile felt that was the lowest quality that was still superior to disk. THEN they noted that many companies had gone to 3 3/4, and most "audiophiles" should revolt. I collect Beatles reels, and I noticed that Capitol's 3 3/4 releases suiond awful compared to the 7 1/2 Ampex counterparts. So while improper storage is definitely an issue, so is the record company's expertise. Oddly enough, you mentioned that your Paul Simon reel sounded good, and someone else said they liked the COlumbia 7 1/2 tapes. My copy of Thriller (3 3/4) sounds pretty good! Columbia must have known what they were doing for once. I also had a copy of "Bringing It All Back Home" (7 1/2) that sounded great despite water damage.
 
We had a few pre-recorded reels in the 60's. The two that were as good or better than their vinyl counterparts were Miles Davis - Kind of Blue and Babs (yech) Streisand's - People (both 7.5 ips - Columbia). The worst hands down was The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind (3.75 ips - United Artists), which was tinny, phasey and weak sounding.
 
Hey Garrard201,
You don't know if that article is online anywhere do you ? Sounds facinating :)

Also, I have been avoiding pre-recorded tapes due to bad tape sheding of certain tape stock due to age, binder faults etc... Have you guys seen much of that with the pre-recorded stuff ?
Should I take a punt ? ...and any titles you could recommend :)
 
I have a pre-recorded copy of the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey on 3 3/4 reel to reel and it sounds awful, not to mention that it is filled with cracks and pops since MGM seemed to have mastered that one from an LP. As far as magnetic tape goes, pre-recorded anything has never really produced a satisfactory amount of fidelity for my tastes. That said, I do have a copy of Coltrane's Africa Brass on an Impulse open reel tape that does sound pretty good. The majority of the reel to reels that I have that sound impressive were recorded of off jazz LPs in the early to mid 60's by a friend of the family who passed the tapes on to me. All I need to do is get a working reel to reel again....
 
I'll find the article when I'm home over Thanksgiving. As for prerecorded reels being mastered off of LPs... read this!

http://www.8trackheaven.com/ampex.html

I believe this article talks about the process the duplication plants used for making a "master" off an LP. If not this article, there's another somewhere on this site. And I imagine they used the same procedures for all tape formats back then (cassette, 8 track, reel), since these were considered "secondary" in both importance, sales, quality and desirability.
 
Garrard201 said:
I'll find the article when I'm home over Thanksgiving. As for prerecorded reels being mastered off of LPs... read this!

http://www.8trackheaven.com/ampex.html

I believe this article talks about the process the duplication plants used for making a "master" off an LP. If not this article, there's another somewhere on this site. And I imagine they used the same procedures for all tape formats back then (cassette, 8 track, reel), since these were considered "secondary" in both importance, sales, quality and desirability.
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Thank you ! :)
I would love to read it... The article in the link was great reading too.. sad to see that era pass in many ways, I wished I had collected some of pre-recorded tapes of my own... Funny then to see so many people paying so much for them on ebay..?!? please feel free to post any other cool tape related articles... he he.... the article for some reason threw me back in time to my very first time in a recording studio when I was about 7... I can still smell the metho the engineer used on the headstack and hear the buzz of the demagnetizer.. that was cool...
 
Back in the day, I used to work for GRT (Blue Label Tape division of Chess/Janis records). All the working masters were on Ampex tape running at very high speed (240 IPS) in partial vacuum loose bin loaders. All the duplicating machines for R2R were Ampex slaves running 3000 ft pancakes of BASF 1/4 tape at 120 IPS. They maintained tension well, but the bulk tape was the cheapest we could get that would hold signal, tracking and linearity for 60 days.

The marketing boys decided that new tape owners would play a new tape more during the first few weeks of ownership. As time went on, it would begin to warp and deteriorate, but the owner would think it was something they'd done. It was just the nature of the business. I don't think anything has changed 35 years later?
 
Joey1127 said:
I have a TEAC A-6300 with only one pinch roller. The only tapes I have any issue with are these pre-recorded 3 3/4 IPS ones. I'm gonna say they were not stored correctly during their initial life. All the 3 3/4 IPS I record or the ANY of the 7 1/2 ips sound GREAT so I'm thinking it's just worn out tape.

Joey1127
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I also have a Teac-A6300 and to be honest it performs really well for a four-track machine, only my ReVox B77 mk2 beats it in the performance stakes.

Also my Teac A-7300 will pretty much play anything thrown at it.
 
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