Don't Buy Fake Reel Tapes For Sale Online

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.