The “vinyl revival” is in full swing, which really means hipsters
want to over-pay for digitally sourced reissues to play on groove-chewing,
off-speed but “cool-looking” Crosley turntables or mediocre, beat-up 1980s
appliances.
I love and prefer decent vinyl played on decent
turntables. But if you think I’m crazy,
you’ll really find it crazy that reel to reel tape is making a comeback!
Reel tape actually has the potential to sound
better than vinyl, but 99 percent of the commercially released tapes made from
1954 through 1986 cannot compete with the LP.
There are many technical reasons for this, but mostly it’s a case of the
manufacturers back then using cheaper tape, slower speeds and higher generation
production tapes.
After Barclay-Crocker closed its doors in 1986, no company
was marketing reel tapes until The Tape Project started in 2010. They source master tapes and carefully dub
them in small batches. The sound quality
is phenomenal, partly because they use a track format that was usually reserved
for professionals (“half-track,” aka “2-track”). The majority of 1954-86 reels were recorded in
“quarter-track,” meaning the audio signal got half as much of the tape, and so
didn’t sound as good as The Tape Project.
The problem with The Tape Project is that it has spurred numerous
con artists to jump on the bandwagon.
Online auctions are right now littered with what are usually labeled “radio
station reels” or “production masters,” making it seem as though they are copies made from the master tape to be
shipped out to radio stations and pressing plants. In reality, someone with a color printer has just
printed out the cover to an album, pasted it on a reel box, and dubbed the music
from a CD. Below are some general truths
about these fake reels.
-Radio stations would get promotional copies of albums on
vinyl. Rarely would they get tapes except for commercials, syndicated programs
or the occasional very hot release. And when
that happened, they would dub the music to a “cart,” which was an endless-loop cartridge
that could be played back quickly. No DJ
was going to sit there and fast-wind through a large reel of tape to find a
song. Google old pictures of radio stations,
and you’ll see a several turntables and cart machines in the booth, and
invariably there will be one or two reel decks -- in the background – and probably
without reels even loaded on them. They
were used infrequently, usually to play long-form, pre-taped programs.
-When radio stations did save reel tapes, they would label
them with pen, or with type-written labels.
Many stations had their own labels to slap onto the box, which included their logo and contact info, and spaces to write dates, song titles, speed information, etc. You can Google all this, too. But no radio stations took the time to print
out color copies of an album cover, measure them to the exact dimensions of the
box, then spend time carefully pasting them on.
Frankly, I don’t know any radio stations that even had color printers in
the building back in the 1960s or 70s (the time that most of these “radio
station reels” supposedly come from).
-When syndicated shows were sent on reel tapes, rarely were
they recorded at the highest speeds (15 or 30 IPS). They were usually sent at 7.5 IPS, which was
the lowest professionally acceptable speed that still provided adequate sound
quality (especially in the days of AM radio).
-There have been many alleged “master tapes” or “production
masters” listed for sale that originate in Moldova or the “Russian Federation.” The sheer number of these online would
indicate that eastern Europe was pressing millions more records each year than
the United States. FALSE. Moldova was under Soviet control until the
early 1990s. Most of the pressing plants
were in government hands, and only pressed “approved” music. Western pop music was considered decadent,
and therefore not pressed or released officially (hence the black-market practice
of inscribing grooves on old X-ray film).
So that “production master” of 1975’s “Born to Run” is not from
Moldova. It is from some guy who has too
much time on his hands.
-Also, how many U.S. or British or German “production
masters” have you seen for sale? I bet
very few. Because once those tapes had
been used, and the music no longer “hip,” the tapes were discarded or recycled
or otherwise not saved. Example: In
1982, Columbia’s Terre Haute, Indiana pressing plant probably got several
copies of the production master for Men at Work’s first album. What do you think the odds are that those tapes
were no longer needed by, say, 1985? I
would say it’s very likely the tapes were NOT saved and coveted and stored away. That being said, in Moldova -- where space is
at a premium, and possession of “decadent Western pop” could be an arrest-able
offense -- I’m pretty sure no pressing plant employee was lugging home large
reels of tape and storing them away in their tiny apartment.
These are just some of the “myths” of all those fake reel
tapes currently online.
