In a message dated 11/15/02 1:07:10 AM Eastern Standard Time,
MAinPsych@... writes:
>
>
> Something occured to me as I was looking at Ken M.'s pics of the MkII
> tape-changing process that might preserve that first station of sounds.
> Rather than cut the tape being changed at the location where you were
> instructed, couldn't the tapes be moved forward, lined up with station 2's
> initial transient marks lined up over the heads, and the cut measured and
> made at the back of the rear roller? Then with the tapes lined back up to
> station 1 (with the tape being replaced left loose, e.g., not taken up on
> the front roller) the new tape attached to the old (in its entirety) could
> be pulled through. This might add a little extra time to the process, but
> would preserve all six stations for possible mounting on a 400 frame.
> Martin/Ken/Bob/Jerry/other MkII owners, what do you think? It's late, and
> I'm tired, but I hope the general idea came through.
>
Frank,
I'm not 100% sure about the method you mention here, but for me, after
it was all said and done, the only real advantage to saving the old tapes was
that it kept things neat and orderly. While working on this, tapes on the
reel are better than tapes lying all over the place.
The reason I say this is because after I changed the tapes I realized I
probably wouldn't use them. First of all, to get the tapes off the MKII,
you really "manhandle" them - pulling and tugging them to unroll the old
tapes from the rear drum, sometimes stretching them a little. Then your
fingers and hands are all over the recorded side, which isn't good for the
sound. Only the first bank has the "sound start" marks, so you'd have to
somehow mark the sound starts on the other 5 banks, and you wouldn't easily
know where to cut them either, because the bank start marks are only on the
index tape. And I probably demagged some of those tapes with my *accidently
magnetized* screwdriver getting them out. Finally, this is the old tape
stock - knowing that the good EMI tape stock is available, I'd now spring for
a new set. All this didn't occur to me *before* I saved the tapes. For me,
it's just not feasible for me to reuse them.
Too much work, questionable results. Possible, yes, feasible, no.
Regarding the loss of the bank 1 tapes - when I started, I didn't care about
those because I had the same sounds in another M400 tape frame. I would have
gotten creative if I wanted to save them.
But, it's good to think about these things. I was trying to come up with a
way where you didn't have to cut the tapes at all, but I went with Martin's
method because it seemed like the best way.
Ken M.