I love your channel. I could watch it all day - just because you are 100% authentic. Thank you for teaching how to be be a truly genuine person! Cheers. PS: Also, learning how to "bake" old tapes is truly fascinating.
Just got my 7th reel to reel this week, Pioneer 1011L the best one yet! I only started buying them about a year ago. Some of the tape are really bad and at some point I will have to bake some of them. The fun part is getting a reel that someone else recorded on and listening to their playlist finding a gem something I may have never heard before or not heard in years. The other great part is I am able to buy machines I wanted as a teen at a fraction of the price I would have paid back in the day at estate sales. Watching you go thru the process of playing your tapes and finding something you had done so may year ago must be a real thrill. Great video Cheers
I have an rt1050, the 1/2 track 15 ips version of your machine. You'll want to replace all the blackleg transistors in it and perhaps the relays, unless that has already been done. Great machines.
Enjoying this video a lot! I just dream of having a studio in the woods, with synthesisers, drums, guitars, other musical instruments, a 16-track tape machine, a 1/2" 2 track machine, and just make some music anytime I want to. This is inspiring!
Love the Tascam MS-16. I ran and maintained one in the early nineties, and synced it with ProTools 1.0 in a small studio in North Georgia. The Tascam is a fine deck - until the soft heads wear out. I use a dehydrator for tape baking myself. I use an infrared thermometer to make sure of the temperature - it works fine.
As a repairman of these pro decks, I still deal with it almost weekly! I even pioneered some of the methods to get that old tape to play one more time. I was the first that I know of to utilize spray silicone as a method of getting that tape to play one more time... someone else figured out baking the stuff. I never thought of that, but of course it now works!
Hey! I recorded a couple of songs on that machine! Engineered quite a few tracks too! Cool to see it’s still running like a dream. Even better is the nostalgic feeling you get from listening to the old stuff.😎
This is one of the coolest videos I’ve seen on youtube. Seriously watery eyed. Love the journey and reminiscing and you taking the time to bring this to us. Thank you.
AAAh "Tree Sound". LOVED THAT Black Face SSL E in the big (mountain climbing wall) Room!!!!!!!!! drums sounded amazing in there...thanx for the memory jog my friend.
I think I may need MLR tape, a dehydrater and a demagnetiser: I managed to get a fully functioning MSR-24 with a bunch of tapes a few months ago, the BASF ones are OK but most of Ampex ones need baking... I'm not sure what I got myself into: I went directly from a 4 tracks Yamaha MT-3X K7 deck to a DAW. What happened was I found back old early 90's recordings, my MT-3X let me down long ago so I had to borrow a working one and... It was the first time I listened to this tapes thru a serious console (Amek Big-44) and serious monitoring (Dynaudio) and it was a holy f-ck moment... Seems I did pretty well when I recorded the stuff because is really sounded great and so warm and so alive, it was I missed with digital recording. I actually considered to get a 8 or maybe 16 tracks RTR recorder for cheap but it happened that there were several 24 tracks ones that were affordable, well, seems that most of these needed maintenance but... the cheapest one which had always been well maintained by its owner. There's another point: with digital, after 6 hours of active listening, my ears are "cooked"... This wasn't the case when I was recording on tapes, and when you're in a creative process, you may absolutely be at it sometimes 30-40 hours in a row, just pausing for your body needs, you can't just be at it for 6-8 hours then go on like this over several days, so, progressively, I started to record and compose less and less and less for my own stuff because instead of having fun at it, it became tiring...
That is exactly the reason . . . About 10 years ago I had a ‘whale’ of a time (i.e. a real PITA) dealing with the whitish dusty mold permeated throughout the Ampex back-coated tape. I pulled out some reals to digitize that I recorded a live gig of Wayne Kramer (former MC5 guitarist) in the late 70s on a Dokorder 1140 4 track. From what I understand Ampex, BASF and all the others were caught by surprise when the use of whale oil was criminalized to protect the whales (which for me is how it should be). Each manufacturer tried formulating different binders. I don’t know how long it took for Ampex to discover the problem and I don’t know if any other manufacturers had similar issues as I only used the Ampex tape. I tried to remove some of it on another tape first but it didn’t turn out so well. So I took the reals that I wanted digitized to a local ‘expert’ that claimed to specialize in the process. What I ended up with was tracks with a high-pitched squeal in the background. The same result I got with my test tape. I don’t know whether the ‘expert’ actually did anything or just played back and digitized the tapes as is. All my tapes were stored in a room inside my house. I threw out all the unused most other recordings. I still have the Kramer stuff along with a very few other bands in case I get another 4 track and decide to give it another try.
I had a 10 inch reel of AMPEX unknown # that had a project on it at 15 IPS in 1977. When it was made I made a copy at 7.5 on Maxell for home use. The Maxell is still OK and works but years ago the AMPEX tape went bad and I knew nothing about reworking binders etc. so it is gone. The only tapes I had problems with much shedding was some Radio Shack stuff one time and it was bad. I got some commercial RTR consumer releases from the early 60s on Ampex tape and it seems to have held up OK. But the Japanese tapes have had no problems in long term storage for me.
Cool video! Yeah, tape has a lot of nostalgia attached to it but. oh Lord, I don't wanna go back to it. I really prefer the convenience of digital now. Oh man, there was a time when I swore I would NEVER go digital..... I was wrong. Good to see ya back on here! Missed ya, man!
Oh man, your videos are the greatest. I've got an old Teac 8 track that's been sitting there forever and i just can't get around to servicing it, plus a whole bunch of Ampex 456 that i did attempt to store properly, but god knows what the condition is now. That food dehydrator method is probably the way to go for me, cheers Billy !
AWESOME!! Keep digging. We had a 4 track back in the 70's and I have had to bake some tapes too. My friend insisted on AMPEX tapes. His gear his choice.
@@MICHIGANROCKSANDROLL I recently got an 1" MSR-24 with a bunch of both Ampex and BASF. All BASF are OK, most of Ampex suffered from sticky shed. Note that the RTM company has bought all the BASF gear and make their tapes using this, so we can get "new" BASF tapes, even 2" ones
I love your 16 traks on a 1 inch tape, your sound is beautyfull!!! I have some tape recorders and a half inch tascam 8 traks recorder, it's a pleasure to see them turning and give you a sound!!!
Excellent video Billy I have tried baking tape and found it hit and miss, I found I would still get some residue on the tape heads which is not so easy to clean off. You're correct that storing tape correctly is a must, man I which I had access to some of the old masters I worked on. I was also trying to saving money at one time and would buy used tapes off Ebay which I will never do that again. For me new tape is the way to go! Yeah the prices on tape today is sky high and only few places at least up here in the New York still sells them. Once I move the goal it to get a Studer A800 2' and Ampex ATR 102 1/2" I know I know I am asking for trouble LOL but I love the old school machines :) I must the admit the UA plug in of these machines are not to bad, but as the song go Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing LOL
I'm neither a musician nor a recording engineer. I started with home hifi as a pre-teen during the late '70s. I fell in love with (consumer) open reel tape in 1980 when I was 13 years old. I earned a degree in electrical/computer engineering in 1990. So I come at things from the direction/perspective of an electronics engineer. Prior to 2019, I had a grand total of two open reel tape machines (both 7" consumer hifi decks). Now I have a collection of around 70 different open reel tape machines, ranging from consumer to semi-pro to pro, and dating from the 1950s through the 1980s. They are pretty much all 1/4" tape. Most are 2T 2C or 4T 2C machines. A couple are 4T 4C. (I'm kind of addicted, to say the least...) 🤣 In any case, I'm well-versed with Sticky Shed Syndrome (SSS) and "baking" tapes in a NESCO food dehydrator. But your video demonstrated the SSS and "baking" adventures in a very clear way for newbies. Excellent job! And hearing your music was really cool, too! I particularly liked the mandolin and dulcimer instrumental stuff. Very nice! Thanks for making this video!
Hey, I'm actually learning about the process of recording on tape, so I'd love some more educational things about that if you could. Thanks for your intro!
During lockdown I resurrected an old Fostex E16 - I'd not used tape since the mid nineties - but wanted a project to do. After lockdown I started doing workshops with it at Uni where I teach music production, and the interesting thing is students came in expecting it to be about the sound, but left afterward thinking deeply about their production processes with digital as opposed to the 'make a decision now' aspect of tape and its imposed "limitations" Some did final projects on the Fostex and really enjoyed the experience, especially the lack of the safety net of multiple takes and editing - and to take risks. I think there is a role still in learning through the prism of the limitations imposed by older technology.
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume Who'd have thought a 35 year old semi-pro machine would be doing sterling work educationally , hooked up to a SSL AWS! I've a small video on my YT page showing it hooked up, including sync to PT so if need be they could combine both projects. As an educator (alongside my freelance recording work🙂) I'm particularly interested in how the learning period develops skill sets. The responsibility and limitations with pre DAW tech I think developed some form of excellence and transferrable skills - something I think still has value to this day. So maybe a pro may not want to work with tape any more - it however had a big impact on how they think and work. So in education there is room for these old clunkers! You're a great educator btw 👍
Wow Im using the same A&H Mixwizard as the front end to my DAW. Maybe one day I'll add a 16 track tape machine but not in the budget. Great channel found you through Ricks channel his interview with you.
I was interning at Tree Sound, haunting its halls, when you were there working on Frisbee Bomb Craters! I wondered what happened to Jeff. I can't find much about him on Discogs. Nice to see you're still around!
Oh wow! That goes way back. I've seen Jeff a little here and there over the years. Seems he does some work in film doing special effects. Hope all is well with you.
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume I am well! Thanks for asking. Moved to Athens many years ago, did a lot of records for myself and other artists as a producer and engineer, then got into mastering about nine years ago which has gone well. I see Jason Kingsland once in a while!
In 1994 there was an article in a German HiFi magazine that a concert recording on AMPEX tape from 1984 was no longer playable. In 1994 I had to clean the white powder off the heads of TDK Metal cassettes after every song in order to copy them onto DAT. The cassettes were only about 8 years old at the time.
I use a commercial dehydrator about the size of a bar fridge, because I get in ten or more tapes at a time, and I like to spread them out. Aside from the oxide binder causing the problem you showed, the backing likes to strip off on tape guides, too. I mitigate that by replacing solid guides with rollers where I can. Not sure whose baking time recommendations you're using, but I consider Eddie Ciletti's work in the field to be the bible for this stuff. I'll often drop the temp to 125 or so, and bake for at least 12 hours, with an equally important 12 hour cooldown.
Word to the wise: if you recover your tapes from binder hydrolysis by baking them, setup your digital capture before playing them. They won't stand up to repeated plays. Each time will likely cause more high end roll off if not drop out.
I used every broadcast video tape machine that Ampex ever made, I now restore these machines back to working condition and use them to xfer old television shows, commercials etc. I bake my 2" quad video tapes for 10-12 hours, then digitize them immediately as they will not hold up to repeated playbacks. Imagine tape against video heads rotating at 14,400 rpm!
@@rty1955 I've seen some of this restoration work, getting quad tapes digitized - it's incredible. I've tinkered around getting a few old reel-to-reel machines back up and running (belts, pinch rollers and associated mechanisms) but I've never monkeyed around with the big video tape formats. It's impressive stuff.
In 1986 i got the job of doing a full alignment on a good 2nd hand 16 track Otari for 2CA Australia's production studio, I have to say it was great fun. Just a memory now.
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume yes, i had to do the work in the control room, because the tech workshop was too small, and production was busy with an MCI 8 track. the only fault we had later...was a bridge rectifier failed in a power supply, So i replaced at lunchtime, and all was ok after that. I had only bought the spare part about 2 days earlier by chance. My boss came back after lunch to find it working again, and just for fun he "told me off" for fixing it too fast. All the VU meters and big reels tend to put me into a hypnotic state. Andrew
I love your tape stuff. How long do you think new old stock 456 1” would last? I have a bunch of it that I got new in back off of Reverb. It was all amazing condition, and my masters are perfect. The tape isn’t that old (mid to late 90’s) but i’m worried about its longevity. What’s my best bet to keep it in good shape?
What happened with analog tape is a bit of a story in itself. Analog tape is basically rust glued to plastic. The ‘rust’ is known as ‘oxide’ (of which there are many different formulations). The ‘glue’ is known as ‘binder’. While the various tape manufacturers developed their own oxides, the binder that they all used was from one manufacturer… 3M… who is known for their ability to make great adhesives. The only problem was that somewhere in the early 70s they changed their binder formulation without realizing that this new formulation attracted moisture… something that took 20 years to discover. The common solution for this is to ‘bake’ the tapes, thus drying them out so they can be transferred. I once had the opportunity to work with the late, great Roger Nichols who told me the best solution was to put the reel of tape in a vacuum chamber and lower the pressure to the equivalent of being at 50,000 feet, which would draw the moisture out without harming the tape. Since we don’t conveniently all have a vacuum chamber lying around, while this may be the BEST way,it’s just not practical. The good news is that once this binder problem was uncovered, it was also corrected, so that the analog tape currently being made will not suffer such a problem. Great video! Cheers!
oh god as someone who's just getting into it in a more serious manner I appreciate being able to learn from your mistakes, of course no offense haha, but I think numbering each reel and box at the very least will help me going forward, I was having like moderate issue keeping track but this totally makes me realize that if I wanted to set up multiple tapes for a session I'd be going crosseyed very fast
Billy I lost CD's, have 2 in one box, have one in wrong box, have another in the wrong box. But they are not interchangeble. Hell, where is the other disk that must be in another wrong box.
I've heard of them being used as a sort of prep for baking and getting rid of mildew or mold on tapes, but they're not powerful enough for pulling moisture out of the middle of the reel.
If you mean Billy's song with the mandolins ("Stoic Song"), you can listen on Bandcamp: billyhume.bandcamp.com/album/frisbee-bomb-craters . . . If you mean the last song "Forgive" (sometimes called "Predator" I think?), yeah that's still unreleased. Billy is working on a new album- maybe that song will be resurrected!
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume I had nearly 200 off 12" one-inch to do. Each dried unit placed in a heatsealed polybag with a sachet of molecular sieve dessicant inside then back in the carton came from. That stuff sucks the moisture out of used silica gel.
I've never had a problem with erasure. One of the AMPEX E-mail list members did an experiment where he recorded two identical tapes with a range of tones. He ran one through a dehydrator again and again over the course of a year, testing it after each bake. At the end of the experiment, he loaded the control example and found no discernable difference. Fun footnote, after the first few plays on the dehydrator tape, the top end actually improved slightly. He attributed it to the heads polishing the tape and allowing for better contact.
I did this to hundreds and hundreds of tapes that were stored in a temperature controlled vault in Hollywood. You'd have to grab a jacket before going in. The ones that really go bad seem to be produced from a certain time period more than others. I can't remember the years but it's no guarantee. This process worked on all the tapes. Sometimes I put some sponges with alcohol to clean the tapes as they unwound but before they reached the head. I just rigged something up. I didn't do that for many. I never had any problems using the alcohol. I probably could have baked some of those tapes longer and not needed the alcohol. We weren't very precise with the baking time. Some tapes take longer to bake than others.
@noonansean1979 actually silicone was the key for me. Alcohol actually has water in it, silicone will keep the stuff from sticking and is a dielectric, but you must use plastic safe silicone, as they have some silicone infused with acetone, that's a nono.
@karijohartmann2649 Yeah when we did this there weren't really any guides and we set up the alcohol as a last ditch effort to deal with the worst of the tapes we had baked more than once or even twice. They'd hiss or worse. Yeah water is polar but it wasn't a problem at all. We even used 70/30 alcohol/water because that's what we had. If I remember correctly I also rigged up a second set of arms to wipe the tapes after they were exposed to the alcohol. We only used the slightest amount of alcohol anyhow. We cut portions of very small portions of sponges and had a drip to keep them moist. It really wasn't a problem. These were professionally stored tapes. Maybe that helped us to some degree. They spanned 20 years. The worst of the bunch was from the 80s I believe but not the entire decade. The oldest tapes were less problematic. I'd suggest whatever people do they test on tape or portions of tape they don't care about first if they can. There are probably lots of great guides people can find now. We didn't have the luxury. Silicone may work great. It may be less likely to degrade the quality. Alcohol worked fine for us. It wasn't necessary for most of the tapes. Only the worst of the worst.
I thought I was OK with my masters on the revox pr99. REVOX tape. But so many years later they went bad. Revox promised new tapes for very cheap. But the masters were gone. Later on we recorded radio programs on A700 machines. All those PER tapes stayed good for the next 30 years. But the tape was way thicker than the cheap tapes.
Do you have one that you previously prepared to save time and all your ingredients laid out in a little glass jars dishes. Is all that strictly required if I want to re-create your recipe from your televised cooking show? hahaha. A food dehydrator that is really a great idea. This is the first video I have run across that explains the problem and not just the solution of bake it. Now it makes sense the glue sticks to everything and the particles go with it or the glue dissipates and the particles flake off.
The Session Logs come in 2 forms: 1 - Certain record labels would want me to document what happened on each session to keep track of progress and costs. 2 - Most of these Session Logs were ones I created for myself so I could go back and see how many hours I was spending on different types of tasks (recording vocals, setting up drums, mixing, etc) so I could have a realistic view of how long it took me to do certain things. My father told me that when you're estimating a task you'll typically underestimate by 50% the time required if you're doing it before you do the task but you'll overestimate by 50% the time required if you're looking back on the task you already did. This is because before you do a task your ego will say to you "That's easy! I'll knock that out quick!" whereas when looking back on a task you'll tend to exaggerate the effort and time - "That took forever!" . So I logged my time with clients and on my own music for years to make sure I was charging enough for my studio time and work. The Producer Declarations are forms that major Labels send me (Universal was the first one that sent me one) for each song I work on that I have to sign in order to get paid - even get a deposit. The forms state that I am not using any uncleared samples and that I take full legal responsibility for any legal issues stemming from the recordings.
Dude. When you stopped playing as the vocals starting and just said how the snare and everything sucks, it totally bummed me out. Those drums, bass, surf rock guitar, and vox sounded great. That was one of the coolest parts of the video and you spoiled it.
Is the tape literally sticky to the touch ? Just wondering if you can tell without trying to play it. My (late) wife was an artist and I think I found some Ampex / Maxell tapes when clearing out her stuff. Also some giant Sony (broadcast?) video tapes. Would love to know what’s on all these old tapes and possibly digitize for posterity.
I can't tell by touch but you'll know within seconds of putting it on a machine. As I was making this video I put on a reel that I thought if baked but hadn't. Within a few seconds of winding the reel it was making a screeching sound and by the time I walked back to the machine it was slowing a stop. Took me 10 minutes to clean the guides and rollers.
@ Apart from gunking up the tape heads and rollers, the more pertinent question is if the actual recording is damaged ? Despite being in tech, and a kid of the 80s, I have a real interest in recording onto tape. Every once in a while I will go look at tape machines on Reverb. Tascam made a mixing desk with a tape recorder built-in back in the day and I came across vids from a guy documenting its restoration and use.
Wow your last song remember me a lot of Frank Zappa most crazy album act, he do a lot of weird amazing album like that, you should defintly made something from those blast from the past ^^ !!!
If you know you had a limited number of takes, then it became much more important that a band is well rehearsed, vocalists well trained, etc. Nowadays you don’t need to be *that* good - unlimited undo and auto tuned vocals can take up the slack 😞
I remember recording to 16 track tape in college. At the time, it was great and we loved it. If I had to do it now, it'd feel like punishment. But going from 4 track cassette to 1 inch 16 track was amazing at the time. 16 whole tracks! These days I use 16 tracks from drum machines in my DAW. Some folks pine for the good old days. I pine for the people... but not the tech. Still, it does have its own sound that it contributed, and that can't be denied.
@@FlipDahlenburg In Logic Pro, the LM1 model is pre-mapped to give you a separate track for each sample. So this enables you to use different EQ on each part, or for example add a gated reverb on just the snare for that authentic 80s sound. It gives you a lot more sonic possibilities.
I think I would've taken my reels of tape, and made a little drive down to Tucson Arizona. Maybe even Las Vegas, and then unpack them and spool them up and spool them down. I would think that the atmosphere in that location those locations would be dry enough and the tape would gradually become dryer. Putting them in the machine and adding extra heat could never be a good idea. yikes!
Were there any lessons you learned about mixing or planning by starting your career bouncing back and forth between two track machines? Is there anything lost to the new generation who is learning to record without those challenges?
Maaaaaan you and I are from parallel universes! I've probably been working in the rap game as an engineer in the same eras and have a stack of old rhyme books and single sheets of lyrics clients left in the booth too, they were packed away somewhere on the last move.
“The way she casually said “you can stay at my place tonight…””
Mate, your channel has been a wonderful find for me this last couple of days.
Thanks! I was waiting for someone to say something about that line!
Especially since about Nov 5th...
I feel like I just watched an episode from a television show dude. Absolutely amazing! Next level stuff here…💜
Thanks! It felt like I was filming an episode that would never end.
I love your channel. I could watch it all day - just because you are 100% authentic. Thank you for teaching how to be be a truly genuine person! Cheers. PS: Also, learning how to "bake" old tapes is truly fascinating.
Thank you so much!
Just got my 7th reel to reel this week, Pioneer 1011L the best one yet! I only started buying them about a year ago. Some of the tape are really bad and at some point I will have to bake some of them. The fun part is getting a reel that someone else recorded on and listening to their playlist finding a gem something I may have never heard before or not heard in years. The other great part is I am able to buy machines I wanted as a teen at a fraction of the price I would have paid back in the day at estate sales. Watching you go thru the process of playing your tapes and finding something you had done so may year ago must be a real thrill. Great video Cheers
Thanks! So awesome that you are finding these old machines and tapes.
I have an rt1050, the 1/2 track 15 ips version of your machine. You'll want to replace all the blackleg transistors in it and perhaps the relays, unless that has already been done. Great machines.
at 10:45 - you are hilarious billy, I am currently binge watching your videos, they're great!! Keep em coming!
Enjoying this video a lot! I just dream of having a studio in the woods, with synthesisers, drums, guitars, other musical instruments, a 16-track tape machine, a 1/2" 2 track machine, and just make some music anytime I want to. This is inspiring!
Love the Tascam MS-16. I ran and maintained one in the early nineties, and synced it with ProTools 1.0 in a small studio in North Georgia. The Tascam is a fine deck - until the soft heads wear out. I use a dehydrator for tape baking myself. I use an infrared thermometer to make sure of the temperature - it works fine.
I was syncing to Protools for a while as well.
And your hunt for track sheets is why I'm always happy if people stuffed them in the box with the tape.
So good! That freaking song at the end is so cool and wild!
As a repairman of these pro decks, I still deal with it almost weekly! I even pioneered some of the methods to get that old tape to play one more time. I was the first that I know of to utilize spray silicone as a method of getting that tape to play one more time... someone else figured out baking the stuff. I never thought of that, but of course it now works!
Hey! I recorded a couple of songs on that machine! Engineered quite a few tracks too! Cool to see it’s still running like a dream. Even better is the nostalgic feeling you get from listening to the old stuff.😎
I'll be using it more over the next few weeks.
Absolutely love watching this old studio tech because it’s such a process and an art. Love it!
This is one of the coolest videos I’ve seen on youtube. Seriously watery eyed. Love the journey and reminiscing and you taking the time to bring this to us. Thank you.
Thanks so much! This one took a bit longer to make than usual but I felt like it was worth the time.
I just finished a pot of coffee in some sort of time vortex. This was a true joy to watch. Thank you.
Thanks so much!
Glad to see new content, Billy.
Thank you for all the effort.
Thanks Maxim! I had to work on a couple of albums so I wasn't able to post much. But I have been filming a lot of content.
AAAh "Tree Sound". LOVED THAT Black Face SSL E in the big (mountain climbing wall) Room!!!!!!!!! drums sounded amazing in there...thanx for the memory jog my friend.
Those test tones brought back memories of degaussing and calibrating the Struder deck at Caribou Ranch.
Thanks for the info on a simple way to bake tape with the dehydrator. I'm appreciative of your knowledge and wit.
9:02 - Maybe what you want is at the start of 'side 2' ?
Always put the Track / Session sheet in the box with the Tape 😁👍🏻
Fun video, got to work with the big 16 tracks just a bit before we went to 12 track AKAI machines. Thanks for the trip do n memory lane!
I think I may need MLR tape, a dehydrater and a demagnetiser: I managed to get a fully functioning MSR-24 with a bunch of tapes a few months ago, the BASF ones are OK but most of Ampex ones need baking... I'm not sure what I got myself into: I went directly from a 4 tracks Yamaha MT-3X K7 deck to a DAW. What happened was I found back old early 90's recordings, my MT-3X let me down long ago so I had to borrow a working one and... It was the first time I listened to this tapes thru a serious console (Amek Big-44) and serious monitoring (Dynaudio) and it was a holy f-ck moment... Seems I did pretty well when I recorded the stuff because is really sounded great and so warm and so alive, it was I missed with digital recording. I actually considered to get a 8 or maybe 16 tracks RTR recorder for cheap but it happened that there were several 24 tracks ones that were affordable, well, seems that most of these needed maintenance but... the cheapest one which had always been well maintained by its owner.
There's another point: with digital, after 6 hours of active listening, my ears are "cooked"... This wasn't the case when I was recording on tapes, and when you're in a creative process, you may absolutely be at it sometimes 30-40 hours in a row, just pausing for your body needs, you can't just be at it for 6-8 hours then go on like this over several days, so, progressively, I started to record and compose less and less and less for my own stuff because instead of having fun at it, it became tiring...
Wow! And yes, the Ampex 456.... ugh. I've realized that I need to bake the tapes longer than the times I've seen suggested online.
Amazing, The vibe is so cool on your track. I need to go though storage and back some tunes back to life.. Keep posting vids love it..
Thanks! More to come.
At Ampex, circa '75, they said that whale oil being outlawed caused them big headaches in making 456 usable.
That is exactly the reason . . . About 10 years ago I had a ‘whale’ of a time (i.e. a real PITA) dealing with the whitish dusty mold permeated throughout the Ampex back-coated tape. I pulled out some reals to digitize that I recorded a live gig of Wayne Kramer (former MC5 guitarist) in the late 70s on a Dokorder 1140 4 track.
From what I understand Ampex, BASF and all the others were caught by surprise when the use of whale oil was criminalized to protect the whales (which for me is how it should be). Each manufacturer tried formulating different binders. I don’t know how long it took for Ampex to discover the problem and I don’t know if any other manufacturers had similar issues as I only used the Ampex tape.
I tried to remove some of it on another tape first but it didn’t turn out so well. So I took the reals that I wanted digitized to a local ‘expert’ that claimed to specialize in the process. What I ended up with was tracks with a high-pitched squeal in the background. The same result I got with my test tape. I don’t know whether the ‘expert’ actually did anything or just played back and digitized the tapes as is. All my tapes were stored in a room inside my house. I threw out all the unused most other recordings. I still have the Kramer stuff along with a very few other bands in case I get another 4 track and decide to give it another try.
I had a 10 inch reel of AMPEX unknown # that had a project on it at 15 IPS in 1977. When it was made I made a copy at 7.5 on Maxell for home use. The Maxell is still OK and works but years ago the AMPEX tape went bad and I knew nothing about reworking binders etc. so it is gone. The only tapes I had problems with much shedding was some Radio Shack stuff one time and it was bad. I got some commercial RTR consumer releases from the early 60s on Ampex tape and it seems to have held up OK. But the Japanese tapes have had no problems in long term storage for me.
Thats awsome man! Keep digging through the crates man your finding gold. Enjoying this journey.
Thanks! I just found some more stuff...
Cool video! Yeah, tape has a lot of nostalgia attached to it but. oh Lord, I don't wanna go back to it. I really prefer the convenience of digital now. Oh man, there was a time when I swore I would NEVER go digital..... I was wrong. Good to see ya back on here! Missed ya, man!
Thanks! It is a lot of extra work and I'm not planning on doing this for my regular work. But it's fun to mess with and I want to try a few things.
I never guessed it was this easy. Bless you Mr. Ronco.
Oh man, your videos are the greatest.
I've got an old Teac 8 track that's been sitting there forever and i just can't get around to servicing it, plus a whole bunch of Ampex 456 that i did attempt to store properly, but god knows what the condition is now. That food dehydrator method is probably the way to go for me, cheers Billy !
Thanks! I hope your tapes are in better shape than mine are.
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume 😂
@bontempo1271 if they are really bad, I've had to bake them in an oven at low heat and use silicone in vast amounts to get them to play.
@@karijohartmann2649 thanks for the tip !
AWESOME!! Keep digging. We had a 4 track back in the 70's and I have had to bake some tapes too. My friend insisted on AMPEX tapes. His gear his choice.
Ampex was the best there was. Second in line would have been Scotch, and then maybe Agfa. They all suffered from sticky shed after 15 years or so.
@@ScottGrammer BASF never had the problem and was used in England fairly regularly. My little studio bought maxell and these tapes id not shed.
@@MICHIGANROCKSANDROLL I recently got an 1" MSR-24 with a bunch of both Ampex and BASF. All BASF are OK, most of Ampex suffered from sticky shed.
Note that the RTM company has bought all the BASF gear and make their tapes using this, so we can get "new" BASF tapes, even 2" ones
I love your 16 traks on a 1 inch tape, your sound is beautyfull!!! I have some tape recorders and a half inch tascam 8 traks recorder, it's a pleasure to see them turning and give you a sound!!!
Excellent video Billy I have tried baking tape and found it hit and miss, I found I would still get some residue on the tape heads which is not so easy to clean off. You're correct that storing tape correctly is a must, man I which I had access to some of the old masters I worked on. I was also trying to saving money at one time and would buy used tapes off Ebay which I will never do that again. For me new tape is the way to go! Yeah the prices on tape today is sky high and only few places at least up here in the New York still sells them. Once I move the goal it to get a Studer A800 2' and Ampex ATR 102 1/2" I know I know I am asking for trouble LOL but I love the old school machines :) I must the admit the UA plug in of these machines are not to bad, but as the song go Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing LOL
I'm neither a musician nor a recording engineer. I started with home hifi as a pre-teen during the late '70s. I fell in love with (consumer) open reel tape in 1980 when I was 13 years old. I earned a degree in electrical/computer engineering in 1990. So I come at things from the direction/perspective of an electronics engineer. Prior to 2019, I had a grand total of two open reel tape machines (both 7" consumer hifi decks). Now I have a collection of around 70 different open reel tape machines, ranging from consumer to semi-pro to pro, and dating from the 1950s through the 1980s. They are pretty much all 1/4" tape. Most are 2T 2C or 4T 2C machines. A couple are 4T 4C. (I'm kind of addicted, to say the least...)
🤣
In any case, I'm well-versed with Sticky Shed Syndrome (SSS) and "baking" tapes in a NESCO food dehydrator.
But your video demonstrated the SSS and "baking" adventures in a very clear way for newbies. Excellent job!
And hearing your music was really cool, too! I particularly liked the mandolin and dulcimer instrumental stuff. Very nice!
Thanks for making this video!
Hey, I'm actually learning about the process of recording on tape, so I'd love some more educational things about that if you could. Thanks for your intro!
I will be doing more videos using the tape in the future. Keep an eye on my channel.
During lockdown I resurrected an old Fostex E16 - I'd not used tape since the mid nineties - but wanted a project to do.
After lockdown I started doing workshops with it at Uni where I teach music production, and the interesting thing is students came in expecting it to be about the sound, but left afterward thinking deeply about their production processes with digital as opposed to the 'make a decision now' aspect of tape and its imposed "limitations"
Some did final projects on the Fostex and really enjoyed the experience, especially the lack of the safety net of multiple takes and editing - and to take risks. I think there is a role still in learning through the prism of the limitations imposed by older technology.
Yes! The sound is a small part of the magic. Commitment is soooo important. Thanks for commenting.
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume Who'd have thought a 35 year old semi-pro machine would be doing sterling work educationally , hooked up to a SSL AWS!
I've a small video on my YT page showing it hooked up, including sync to PT so if need be they could combine both projects.
As an educator (alongside my freelance recording work🙂) I'm particularly interested in how the learning period develops skill sets. The responsibility and limitations with pre DAW tech I think developed some form of excellence and transferrable skills - something I think still has value to this day. So maybe a pro may not want to work with tape any more - it however had a big impact on how they think and work. So in education there is room for these old clunkers! You're a great educator btw
👍
Wow Im using the same A&H Mixwizard as the front end to my DAW. Maybe one day I'll add a 16 track tape machine but not in the budget. Great channel found you through Ricks channel his interview with you.
Wow you got the 16-track analog multi track recorder my friend from Puru has the Ampex version in Florida.
...smell ... YES :) I wonder if Kempers would sell better coming with a smell generator fitting the amp profile ...
I was interning at Tree Sound, haunting its halls, when you were there working on Frisbee Bomb Craters! I wondered what happened to Jeff. I can't find much about him on Discogs. Nice to see you're still around!
Oh wow! That goes way back. I've seen Jeff a little here and there over the years. Seems he does some work in film doing special effects. Hope all is well with you.
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume I am well! Thanks for asking. Moved to Athens many years ago, did a lot of records for myself and other artists as a producer and engineer, then got into mastering about nine years ago which has gone well.
I see Jason Kingsland once in a while!
Of cool! Kingsland is THE MAN!
In 1994 there was an article in a German HiFi magazine that a concert recording on AMPEX tape from 1984 was no longer playable. In 1994 I had to clean the white powder off the heads of TDK Metal cassettes after every song in order to copy them onto DAT. The cassettes were only about 8 years old at the time.
I got tdk tapes from the early 70s that sound fine still.
I use a commercial dehydrator about the size of a bar fridge, because I get in ten or more tapes at a time, and I like to spread them out. Aside from the oxide binder causing the problem you showed, the backing likes to strip off on tape guides, too. I mitigate that by replacing solid guides with rollers where I can.
Not sure whose baking time recommendations you're using, but I consider Eddie Ciletti's work in the field to be the bible for this stuff. I'll often drop the temp to 125 or so, and bake for at least 12 hours, with an equally important 12 hour cooldown.
I'll try that baking time / temp formula on the next run.,
Word to the wise: if you recover your tapes from binder hydrolysis by baking them, setup your digital capture before playing them. They won't stand up to repeated plays. Each time will likely cause more high end roll off if not drop out.
True! Good advice.
I used every broadcast video tape machine that Ampex ever made, I now restore these machines back to working condition and use them to xfer old television shows, commercials etc. I bake my 2" quad video tapes for 10-12 hours, then digitize them immediately as they will not hold up to repeated playbacks. Imagine tape against video heads rotating at 14,400 rpm!
@@rty1955 I've seen some of this restoration work, getting quad tapes digitized - it's incredible. I've tinkered around getting a few old reel-to-reel machines back up and running (belts, pinch rollers and associated mechanisms) but I've never monkeyed around with the big video tape formats. It's impressive stuff.
That bit in the middle with you randomly spacing out me spit out my coffee 😂
Ha ha! If you worked with me you would actually see something like this happen at some point.
Creative. Thank you for posting.
Thanks!
In 1986 i got the job of doing a full alignment on a good 2nd hand 16 track Otari for 2CA Australia's production studio,
I have to say it was great fun. Just a memory now.
Sounds like a great memory and experience!
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume yes, i had to do the work in the control room, because the tech workshop was too small,
and production was busy with an MCI 8 track. the only fault we had later...was a bridge rectifier failed in a power supply,
So i replaced at lunchtime, and all was ok after that. I had only bought the spare part about 2 days earlier by chance.
My boss came back after lunch to find it working again, and just for fun he "told me off" for fixing it too fast.
All the VU meters and big reels tend to put me into a hypnotic state. Andrew
It's a pity the Ampex brand suffered from this. When the Ampex tapes were new, they were great to record on. I feel your pain.
The 8-track tap emachine is a good product - get great quality demo on those machines.
I'm also a fan of the Nesco dehydrators, got the idea from Wendy Carlos. Off topic but I always put the track sheets in the tape boxes.
I used to put track sheets in the boxes. Then I switched to a notebook. Now I regret that change.
I love your tape stuff. How long do you think new old stock 456 1” would last? I have a bunch of it that I got new in back off of Reverb. It was all amazing condition, and my masters are perfect. The tape isn’t that old (mid to late 90’s) but i’m worried about its longevity. What’s my best bet to keep it in good shape?
456 is one of the worst for 'shedding' if it's not stored right. it'll last a long time but needs to be in a dry space and not hot.
Funny, I was recording/mixing ITB at 24-bit 88.2K till the late 90s when I switched to tape.😄
What happened with analog tape is a bit of a story in itself. Analog tape is basically rust glued to plastic. The ‘rust’ is known as ‘oxide’ (of which there are many different formulations). The ‘glue’ is known as ‘binder’. While the various tape manufacturers developed their own oxides, the binder that they all used was from one manufacturer… 3M… who is known for their ability to make great adhesives. The only problem was that somewhere in the early 70s they changed their binder formulation without realizing that this new formulation attracted moisture… something that took 20 years to discover.
The common solution for this is to ‘bake’ the tapes, thus drying them out so they can be transferred. I once had the opportunity to work with the late, great Roger Nichols who told me the best solution was to put the reel of tape in a vacuum chamber and lower the pressure to the equivalent of being at 50,000 feet, which would draw the moisture out without harming the tape. Since we don’t conveniently all have a vacuum chamber lying around, while this may be the BEST way,it’s just not practical.
The good news is that once this binder problem was uncovered, it was also corrected, so that the analog tape currently being made will not suffer such a problem. Great video! Cheers!
Thanks! I actually have more tapes to bake... ugh.
this is realllly great stuff Love it!
I'm freaking out too, my Revox B77 2 track arrives tomorrow!
WHAT???? That's awesome!!!!!
Is that the MkII?
oh god as someone who's just getting into it in a more serious manner I appreciate being able to learn from your mistakes, of course no offense haha, but I think numbering each reel and box at the very least will help me going forward, I was having like moderate issue keeping track but this totally makes me realize that if I wanted to set up multiple tapes for a session I'd be going crosseyed very fast
14:40 ahaha presonus firepod spotted
I am happy that my mistakes help others avoid them. And I've made plenty of mistakes so more to come.
I own 2 reel deck (AKAI GX635D and Otari MX5050) . Nice setup and thks for this video sir.
Thank you!!
Billy I lost CD's, have 2 in one box, have one in wrong box, have another in the wrong box. But they are not interchangeble. Hell, where is the other disk that must be in another wrong box.
I would love to do the lead vocals on that mandolin track I have a fully refurbished 3440! and digiat Performer.
b.
I wonder if silica gel packs would also work.
I've heard of them being used as a sort of prep for baking and getting rid of mildew or mold on tapes, but they're not powerful enough for pulling moisture out of the middle of the reel.
That song is awesome, wish it was on spotify
If you mean Billy's song with the mandolins ("Stoic Song"), you can listen on Bandcamp: billyhume.bandcamp.com/album/frisbee-bomb-craters . . . If you mean the last song "Forgive" (sometimes called "Predator" I think?), yeah that's still unreleased. Billy is working on a new album- maybe that song will be resurrected!
@@kitcatmama Thank you! that's a good song
I heard about that baking thing on a podcast with Subpop producer Jack Endino (Nirvana) also a cool storyteller. Great video btw
I once used a standard fridge with a thermostat heater inside
Very cool!
@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume I had nearly 200 off 12" one-inch to do. Each dried unit placed in a heatsealed polybag with a sachet of molecular sieve dessicant inside then back in the carton came from. That stuff sucks the moisture out of used silica gel.
Dude I got year old tapes and i always bake. And yes a motor from a dehydrator is magnetized. Say no more.
I've never had a problem with erasure. One of the AMPEX E-mail list members did an experiment where he recorded two identical tapes with a range of tones. He ran one through a dehydrator again and again over the course of a year, testing it after each bake. At the end of the experiment, he loaded the control example and found no discernable difference. Fun footnote, after the first few plays on the dehydrator tape, the top end actually improved slightly. He attributed it to the heads polishing the tape and allowing for better contact.
just found your channel its great !!!
Thanks!!!
I did this to hundreds and hundreds of tapes that were stored in a temperature controlled vault in Hollywood. You'd have to grab a jacket before going in. The ones that really go bad seem to be produced from a certain time period more than others. I can't remember the years but it's no guarantee.
This process worked on all the tapes. Sometimes I put some sponges with alcohol to clean the tapes as they unwound but before they reached the head. I just rigged something up. I didn't do that for many. I never had any problems using the alcohol. I probably could have baked some of those tapes longer and not needed the alcohol. We weren't very precise with the baking time. Some tapes take longer to bake than others.
@noonansean1979 actually silicone was the key for me. Alcohol actually has water in it, silicone will keep the stuff from sticking and is a dielectric, but you must use plastic safe silicone, as they have some silicone infused with acetone, that's a nono.
@karijohartmann2649
Yeah when we did this there weren't really any guides and we set up the alcohol as a last ditch effort to deal with the worst of the tapes we had baked more than once or even twice. They'd hiss or worse.
Yeah water is polar but it wasn't a problem at all. We even used 70/30 alcohol/water because that's what we had. If I remember correctly I also rigged up a second set of arms to wipe the tapes after they were exposed to the alcohol. We only used the slightest amount of alcohol anyhow. We cut portions of very small portions of sponges and had a drip to keep them moist.
It really wasn't a problem. These were professionally stored tapes. Maybe that helped us to some degree. They spanned 20 years. The worst of the bunch was from the 80s I believe but not the entire decade. The oldest tapes were less problematic.
I'd suggest whatever people do they test on tape or portions of tape they don't care about first if they can. There are probably lots of great guides people can find now. We didn't have the luxury.
Silicone may work great. It may be less likely to degrade the quality. Alcohol worked fine for us. It wasn't necessary for most of the tapes. Only the worst of the worst.
I thought I was OK with my masters on the revox pr99. REVOX tape. But so many years later they went bad. Revox promised new tapes for very cheap. But the masters were gone.
Later on we recorded radio programs on A700 machines. All those PER tapes stayed good for the next 30 years. But the tape was way thicker than the cheap tapes.
that lil jon stuff is cool
Do you have one that you previously prepared to save time and all your ingredients laid out in a little glass jars dishes. Is all that strictly required if I want to re-create your recipe from your televised cooking show? hahaha. A food dehydrator that is really a great idea. This is the first video I have run across that explains the problem and not just the solution of bake it. Now it makes sense the glue sticks to everything and the particles go with it or the glue dissipates and the particles flake off.
can you elaborate on the session log/producer declaration stuff?
The Session Logs come in 2 forms:
1 - Certain record labels would want me to document what happened on each session to keep track of progress and costs.
2 - Most of these Session Logs were ones I created for myself so I could go back and see how many hours I was spending on different types of tasks (recording vocals, setting up drums, mixing, etc) so I could have a realistic view of how long it took me to do certain things. My father told me that when you're estimating a task you'll typically underestimate by 50% the time required if you're doing it before you do the task but you'll overestimate by 50% the time required if you're looking back on the task you already did. This is because before you do a task your ego will say to you "That's easy! I'll knock that out quick!" whereas when looking back on a task you'll tend to exaggerate the effort and time - "That took forever!" . So I logged my time with clients and on my own music for years to make sure I was charging enough for my studio time and work.
The Producer Declarations are forms that major Labels send me (Universal was the first one that sent me one) for each song I work on that I have to sign in order to get paid - even get a deposit. The forms state that I am not using any uncleared samples and that I take full legal responsibility for any legal issues stemming from the recordings.
I used to rebuild grand pianos. I would keep track of how much time it took for each portion of the job. Even so, I would always double my estimate.
Cool video!!
Thanks so much!
Good stuff. That Predator song is dynamite!
Thanks so much! I've been on some sessions lately but a couple of days ago I got back on that song. Will have more about the song as I work on it.
That was fun! =)
👉 Wow, how cool😎 was THAT.! Thanks for sharing man.
Dude. When you stopped playing as the vocals starting and just said how the snare and everything sucks, it totally bummed me out. Those drums, bass, surf rock guitar, and vox sounded great. That was one of the coolest parts of the video and you spoiled it.
That was awesome!
Thanks man!
ANALOG BABY. Nothing better 😛👊
Why on Earth would the Track Sheets not be anywhere but in the Tape Box?
I want a 16 track machine but I don't want the WHOLE thing on analog. I'd bounce it to a macbook.. that's the best thing to do right?
Is the tape literally sticky to the touch ? Just wondering if you can tell without trying to play it. My (late) wife was an artist and I think I found some Ampex / Maxell tapes when clearing out her stuff. Also some giant Sony (broadcast?) video tapes. Would love to know what’s on all these old tapes and possibly digitize for posterity.
I can't tell by touch but you'll know within seconds of putting it on a machine. As I was making this video I put on a reel that I thought if baked but hadn't. Within a few seconds of winding the reel it was making a screeching sound and by the time I walked back to the machine it was slowing a stop. Took me 10 minutes to clean the guides and rollers.
@ Apart from gunking up the tape heads and rollers, the more pertinent question is if the actual recording is damaged ?
Despite being in tech, and a kid of the 80s, I have a real interest in recording onto tape. Every once in a while I will go look at tape machines on Reverb. Tascam made a mixing desk with a tape recorder built-in back in the day and I came across vids from a guy documenting its restoration and use.
Yes, if the oxide is coming off the tape, then the recording can be damaged.
Wow your last song remember me a lot of Frank Zappa most crazy album act, he do a lot of weird amazing album like that, you should defintly made something from those blast from the past ^^ !!!
Thanks. I'm working on a new album and plan on finishing that one for the project.
listen carefully to Duran duran wild boys at the beginning you can hear the smpte for a split second circa 8 seconds in
oh damn! Probably bleed from having a track right next to the SMPTE track.
If you know you had a limited number of takes, then it became much more important that a band is well rehearsed, vocalists well trained, etc. Nowadays you don’t need to be *that* good - unlimited undo and auto tuned vocals can take up the slack 😞
the "balumbata" is actually a Balafon, it's sound is part Unesco's world heritage. These instruments are from Mali and Burkina Faso
Ah... I was thinking I might not have it right. Thanks!
That song with Bone Crusher kind of sounds like Yes in the ghetto.
Ha ha! So true.
8:58 Come On dont stop the music,maybe snare sound is bad, but me likey.
I remember recording to 16 track tape in college. At the time, it was great and we loved it. If I had to do it now, it'd feel like punishment. But going from 4 track cassette to 1 inch 16 track was amazing at the time. 16 whole tracks! These days I use 16 tracks from drum machines in my DAW. Some folks pine for the good old days. I pine for the people... but not the tech. Still, it does have its own sound that it contributed, and that can't be denied.
"I pine for the people" - Bulls eye!
If you use sixteen tracks for drums only, you're a shmuck.
@@FlipDahlenburg In Logic Pro, the LM1 model is pre-mapped to give you a separate track for each sample. So this enables you to use different EQ on each part, or for example add a gated reverb on just the snare for that authentic 80s sound. It gives you a lot more sonic possibilities.
Great. I have few tapes 1, 1/2 & 1/4 inches some are not used at all.if you are interested to purchase?
Used lots of 456...but it was new in 1995 and tails out was the rule.😂
I'm Diggin!!Cheers!!;-)!!
Thanks!
I think I would've taken my reels of tape, and made a little drive down to Tucson Arizona. Maybe even Las Vegas, and then unpack them and spool them up and spool them down. I would think that the atmosphere in that location those locations would be dry enough and the tape would gradually become dryer. Putting them in the machine and adding extra heat could never be a good idea. yikes!
That's why Tom Schultz said it took so long to put out the 3rd stage album. Sticky tape.
Ha metal dust. Never thought of it that way!
Were there any lessons you learned about mixing or planning by starting your career bouncing back and forth between two track machines? Is there anything lost to the new generation who is learning to record without those challenges?
Gotta bake em yea? Also, awesome vid man
Yes. I had to go back and bake some of them a 2nd time.
Analog still holds up just fine. It's just a little fiddly.
Maaaaaan you and I are from parallel universes! I've probably been working in the rap game as an engineer in the same eras and have a stack of old rhyme books and single sheets of lyrics clients left in the booth too, they were packed away somewhere on the last move.
You should look for them.
Print through?
Shouldn't be a problem if you didn't hit the tape too hard and keep the temperature below 140F. I always do 130F, comes out perfectly every time.
Why is it obvious that you wouldn't need a food dehydrator?
Thank god I live in the Southwest--drying is more the issue here, but I'd rather deal with that.
10:43 hahaha
10:40 hahahahaha yeah man, i know that feeling