Quantegy stopping production of mag tape

[dbuckley]

Just linked to the image, it's only 36K, even if a bit wide :** laughs out loud **:

 

There are other manufacturers of tape, but this is the former Ampex, and also BASF gave up last year. Tape will soon get quitre hard to find.

 

 

 

 

 

http://quantegy.com/images/Q-Website-Addon_02.gif

[Simon Lewis]

There are other manufacturers of tape, but this is the former Ampex, and also BASF gave up last year. Tape will soon get quitre hard to find.

 

The leading article in Pro Sound News (Europe) ran with this story. They also state that two companies (RMGI and ATR) are taking up the slack and believe that there's a market for their tape based products....

[Guest lightnix]

Tape will soon get quitre hard to find.

Sad, but true - although I think that like vinyl and 35mm film, there will be a market for some time to come and that it will be decades before it completely disappears.

 

I was lucky enough to get some hands-on experience of manually editing tape at college, along with some basic tape manipulation techniques (loops, echo, etc.) and was reminded of it last week, when I saw a repeat of BBC4s Alchemists Of Sound, a fascination documentary about the old BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

 

In the 60s and 70s, before synths and sampling became the norm, tape manipulation was frequently (if not mostly) used to produce a whole range of "electronic" music, mainly by recording a sound, playing around with it, re-recording it at different speeds to get different notes and then sticking them together to form a rhythm or melody. The original bass line of the Dr. Who theme was created in this way.

 

So was the famous (to those of a certain age) playout to John Craven's Newsround (Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do, DA DA DA DA DA DUM). Now... can anybody tell me which two sounds were used to create it? :** laughs out loud **:

 

The point of this little ramble is that while electronic and digital techniques have replaced have offered convenience, they have led to the demise of an amazingly flexible, creative audio tool and earlier BBC Radiophonic music is arguably some of the richest-sounding, because most of the sounds used to create it were acoustic and / or analogue in origin. Anyone who has heard Delia Derbyshire's hypnotising Blue Veils & Golden Sands will know exactly what I mean.

 

I'm trying to find copies of the two BBC Radiophonic albums (not the Dr. Who stuff), but sadly they're only available for silly money (£30-50) on Shamazon and fleaBay at the moment ;)

[andy_s]

oh yes - razor blades, coat hangers, cotton reels and chinagraphs essential toolkit items when I first started making up sound effects... and the track transfer setting on a B77 for those amazing reverb effects....

[charlyfarly]

I enjoyed that programme too, Lightnix.

I still have my quarter and half inch editing blocks and still occasionly use my 15ips Revox A77 for little projects or to have fun.

I still remember the heady days in the late 80's at the SAE the tasks they gave us for tape editing. We were also given time to practice on the new-fangled Mark of the Unicorn editing programmes.

Real manual editing is going to become a Dark Art! :** laughs out loud **:

[Guest lightnix]

One of the most useful things I own, is an old, 2" video tape box - the heavy duty plastic type, with the central, twist-lock. I rescued it from a clearout at a studio and wish (oh, wish) I'd had the car with me that day - I'd have filled it with the things.

 

These days it's used as a "fine work" tool box, for tiny tools.

[dbuckley]

... by recording a sound, playing around with it, re-recording it at different speeds to get different notes and then sticking them together to form a rhythm or melody. The original bass line of the Dr. Who theme was created in this way.

Indeed, from the sound of a ruler being twanged over a desk :** laughs out loud **:

 

I'm old enough to still have my splicing blocks and degausser, along with a few rolls of leader...

 

I was a big fan of musique concrete, back in the day.