Tape Trail

Posted by Mercury Boy (A) on October 22, 2007 at 19:56:37

In Reply to: RE: I have a few Telarc pre-recordeds on TDK SA, even better are the Telarcs on TDK Metal by Nakamichi Reference posted by Teresa on October 22, 2007 at 19:32:35

Those were the days...you'd get lovely glossy monthly updates from Telarc via snail mail and their CDs were the best of a bad lot...I seem to recall Telarc went on quite a bit about their state of the art cassette duplication (I think it was 4 x speed but I could be mistaken). They even spoke about how the huge pancakes of SA tape were delivered from TDK.

I used to get very excited when I saw a new Telarc cassette on the shelves at the music store. There was always something about the accuracy of instrumental timbre on my Telarc cassettes that the CD did not match. It's a bit like the vinyl versus CD viewpoints I have today.

I used tape a heck of a lot in the 80s and 90s and even ended up buying a TEAC open reel. It had quite an appetite and cost me a wad to fuel it's diet of Ampex 456. But it did not suffer the annoying but subtle flutter problems that I had with cassette - even with the Nakamichi.

I have no idea how you get the stuff you talk about but I'm happy for you that you have it. In the end the thing that knocked tape on the head for me was actually the lack of a range of titles. This was of course long before the internet. Now I see lots of stuff for sale including lots of old pre-recorded open reel.

Edits: 10/22/07