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Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats. |
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Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats. |
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In Reply to: Evaluating heads posted by BofService on January 23, 2006 at 19:26:01:
Generally speaking, as a tape head wears out there are two problems. The first is mechanical due to the planing action of the abrasive tape surface wearing the metal surface away. This produces a groove that can make alignment impossible; especially if the head was mis-aligned during most of the wear pattern. Professional heads usually have enough metal in their construction that these heads can be "re-lapped", in other words, abrasively re-contoured to the original geometry. Consumer heads usually do not.The second problem is also caused by the mechanical wear, but it manifests itself as a change in the frequency response. As a head wears, the high frequency response will actually rise slightly as the thickness of the metal around the actual gap is reduced. This will show up as a rising response at the very top of the frequencies involved. This will continue until so much metal is worn away that the gap begins to widen, at which time the high frequency response will plummet. Once this happens, the head is toast.
Hope this helps.
Bill
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- Re: Evaluating heads - Bill Thomas 10:03:23 01/25/06 (0)
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