So I saw where Nando and Ivo suggested a new thread on reel to reel tape experience. Never one to miss a chance to pontificate, I'll chime in, thankyouverymuch.
I'll do the easy part first. I'm not a fan of the NOS tapes but that's primarily because the prices for the good ones are now equal to or more than the new stuff. I prefer buying new and supporting the existing manufacturers these days. But that's just me. If you can find a deal on good NOS tapes, jump on it.
That said, I came across a reel of
Maxell UD 35-90 when I first bought my Pioneer RT-1050 to get back into the hobby about ten years ago (has it been that long?). I'm listening to it now and it's fine other than it's recorded in half track and I'm listening on a quarter track Revox. It's a backcoated tape but shows no sign of sticky shed. Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon sound pretty damn fine right now, thanks to a mixer that allows me to balance the output between the channels. I'd forgotten how good that big Pioneer was at recording. And I'd have no trouble recommending this tape but won't go looking for it.
The big stash of NOS tape I used for several years came from surplus from the campus radio station - a couple of boxes of NOS
Quantegy 407 either on the reel or as pancakes. Most of my early recordings were made to that tape and if you've been following my commentary lately you'll know I'm finding the stuff that came from the box of pancakes is beginning to show signs of sticky shed, even though its reputation up to now has been good. (And yes, Quantegy was formed by Ampex engineers after Ampex went belly-up in the early 80s after digital wiped out the analog side of the industry. The tapes were manufactured at a facility just down the road in Anniston, Alabama, IIRC.) Definitely not a fan of the backcoated Ampex tapes and now the Quantegy version seems to be going downhill as well. I will say that the reel of Quantegy 480 I got from Nando last year is doing well, as are a couple of reels of non-backcoated
Ampex 641 speech-grade tape. But I don't recommend 641 for high-quality recordings as it's kinda noisy.
To the new stuff. I have used both
RMGI/RTM LPR-35 and
SM-911 without issue. I had my Revox PR-99, my Teac 3440, and my Tascam 38 all calibrated to SM911 and loved it while making those live recordings for UT Chattanooga 7 or 8 years ago. You could hit it like a rented mule and it just sounded right. I used the LPR-35 in my home system and liked it fine but it couldn't be flogged quite as hard as the SM-911. Which makes sense, it's a 1 mil tape and the SM911 is a 1.5 mil thick tape. My LPR-35 recordings still sound good after 7 or 8 years.
I also tried, and liked, the
Capture 914 1.5 mil thick tape I evaluated about four years ago. My tests were a bit unfair in that my PR-99 was calibrated to the SM-911 and the recordings sounded a little dark but that's to be expected; they are different formulas. I don't hesitate to recommend either the 914 or the
Capture 930 (1 mil) tapes, especially at their price points. They are the value leader among the new tapes. But you have to calibrate your deck to this tape.
My favorite, however, and by some margin, is
ATR's MDS-36 1 mil tape. I've calibrated my B77 Revox to it and it is just magical in its ability to record music. I told Nakdoc the other day after recording
Kind Of Blue from a digital file he gave me that my eyes were telling me one thing but the sound was telling me another. I buried the meters in the red - and not for transients, either - but the sound was just beautiful. Clear, clean, transparent. Incredible high end, lots of air around the instruments. I'm sure ATR's Master 1.5 mil tape is even better but I think the B77 would have to have some circuit upgrades to fully access a +9 tape like ATR Master. I'm hitting the MDS-36 at +5 or so and you'd never know I was over the 0db mark on the meters, it's that good. My highest recommendation for absolute quality sound. I sent a mixtape to Nando a couple of years ago on ATR MDS-36; I'll let him give another perspective to my assessment but as I recall, he liked the sound a lot.
All that said, I have three final points.
First, extracting the most out of a reel to reel (or a cassette) deck really means you need to spend the time (or in my case, the money) to properly calibrate the deck to a specific tape. Unless its an auto-cal Nakamichi or such. Even if you have Bias and EQ switches on your deck(s), I still recommend setting the deck up for one specific tape you'll use most of the time. Those recordings will be the best you can extract from the recorder. I have no choice with my Revox; it has no Bias or EQ switches. I have to pick a tape and stick with it but that plays to my preferences anyway. But don't worry if you come across a good deal on some older tapes. A deck with Bias and EQ switches will benefit from your decision to pick a reference tape for the majority of your use, but playing with those switches while monitoring a test recording on the other tape(s) will get you close enough to use them to good advantage.
Second, all of the new tapes I speak of are backcoated. I do not know of any tape currently being made that is not backcoated. I'm fine with that; I'll be long dead before my ATR stuff goes bad, if it ever does. But it is something to consider if you lean towards older tapes.
Third: in a lot of cases, old acetate and early mylar tapes bought on the cheap are false economy. A lot of this stuff is very abrasive and new tape heads are rare as hen's teeth. They'll be expensive if you can find them at all, so beware. If you have a stash of decks, you can play. Me, I only have one of each and have to protect my investment, which means using the new stuff unless I run across some UD or XL Maxell.
Happy taping, folks.
