Cart rescue

Curiously satisfying, that. Nice one!

Hi any recommendations for turning a md player into a transmitter for Bluetooth earbuds. Is it doable??? Thx 😊

A fully OCD-compliant experience: locating the foil splice and realigning it with your initial cut... leaders on both ends... trimming the ends in Audacity... ahhhhh. Wonderfully satisfying. Was hoping to experience this cart on the ole' Skip Intro like the others, but was left hunting down this post to look for it! Is there a full post of the soundtrack coming?

I've done a bit of work reviving old 8-track tapes, but I haven't yet run across any with visible mold. The worst I see is when the tape has lost its "lube" and no longer will pull out of the center without significant force (deforming the tape in the process). I generally have to toss those in the bin, since I don't have a 1/4" tape deck that can read individual tracks from an 8-track tape.

This tape remembered me some reel to reel tape recorders which were manufactured by Tesla since 1960s to 1980s. These also had 4 individual mono tracks on a tape

L33T 🤓 I may need to purchase a reel tape splicing kit, that may come in very handy in future.

I've started to listen to a bunch of 1970s and 1980s vinyl albums again. Your Allegro cartridge inspired me to play those again.. It's similar music, and I still have 75 records of them :)

Audacity is fine as long as you get it from the official website. Audacity unfortunately has a lot of people trying to sell a free program

One of the many things that I've learned here and one that surprises me still is that all magnetic audio tape is basically the same. The speed changes and there are different numbers of tracks, but you can play it back on pretty much any other system if it will do the speed and has the right width heads. And if it can't do the speed, there is Audacity. All the speeds are divisors of 15 in/s ... is that the actual speed or is it the Imperial equivalent of a standard that is actually in SI? And was there ever 30 in/s audio tape?

Hi Mat, Everyone - Just on the upload thing...... Uploading to mixcloud is a way of uploading copyrighted material as they have agreements with the recording / distribution companies. Material that's uploaded can be directly identified at the point of uploading or their digital fingerprinting should pick it up. It's a way of legally doing it. I use it for uploading my radio shows, I tend to upload a tracklist as part of the upload and the ones I haven't are still accepted fine.

I think this was a worth while video. I appreciated watching your problem solving in getting the audio off. Thanks for the vid!

I really liked this video, in fact I felt like doing it too

Why am I just now learning the English spelling variation mould = mold? I guess I haven't been chatting with anyone about the topic before today. I do love learning something new.

I think one of them was THAT Bryan Adams track. Also, last, La Dolce Vita by Ryan Paris... who was actually Italian. Good luck with hospital this week. Had my pacemaker replaced on Wednesday, and I'm doing OK so far!

Great video - I was wondering whether you were going to spool the tape into an empty cassette so you could clean the mould off with the JAPT (slightly problematic name) cleaner!

I enjoyed that. - cutting and splicing - definitely my era! I reckon if you ran the tape through a clean duster, stopping every 20 ft or so to change the duster surface, you could put it back in the cartridge. We had the same trouble with IVC 1" video tapes at the University of London AV Centre - mould was feeding on the plasticiser. Serves us right for storing them in a basement! :-)

I love reel to reel, it's truly the unix of tape audio. It can do just about anything if you have the knowledge and time to learn it.

Just another excellent video, Mat. What a wonderful way to spend time between teatimes....

Thanks for this. Have the best week possible.

Apologies for the ignorance, I have never owned a reel to reel but... when transferring tape from 1 reel to another, I'm guessing it's the reel destination reel that is powered and the other reel is free floating with a slight resistance, so could you not bother threading the tape through the play section of the machine and just going directly from 1 reel to the other?

You are more proficient in audacity than I am...but I did a similar thing a few years ago...I found some reel-reel mix tapes I recorded off the FM radio in the 80s. They were recorded on a Telefunken portable machine that wasn't corrected for 60hz power...so the tape speeds were all wrong. I captured them, corrected the speed in audacity (and fixed some levels) and stuck them on a thumb drive. A snapshot in time.

Great video thank you, How about a snippet of "Bits and pieces" before you play the tracks to give it a Radio 1 Roadshow feel.

A lazy Sunday afternoon with a Techmoan video to watch, perfect.

Well, six of ten is rather ok. ;-)

Nice rescue. A suggestion for the future: Record the tape with 96khz (or 88.2khz). There should be an option in Audacity to change the file properties to 48khz (or 44.1khz). That way you get the right speed and the result should sound a little better.

My favourite line: "Content match that, YouTube!"

It was gouda you to preserve the tape 🧀 - and I only recognized clip 8. That's the one most likely to content match, I would think. I wonder if there's a mold cleaning machine for R2R like the Cleankit Cassette Cleaner JT1000. Your ingenuity was fun to watch. Personally, I would despair with curiosity to know what was on the tape, and it would be a real heartbreak to throw it out without trying. Have a good week ahead and take care. Stray Random Thought: Do your hospitals and clinics have BGM? I don't recall that any over here do 🤔 just PA systems and creepy machine whirring and beeping.

I’m enjoying these videos of the BGM tapes. Seeing all the videos you’ve done on obsolete media, it seems that we are in a sort of Golden Age of obsolete technology. The last century or so have seen many forms of tech come and go in increasingly rapid succession and we seem to be settling in to more universal forms of tech. Smartphones being a prime example.

Regarding the mold; should the reel deck be cleaned to prevent mold from spreading to other reels?

Great video Mat. Playing and recording with double speed and then digitally reducing to half speed will limit the upper frequency to less than 10kHz. It may be that the songs are already limited to less than 10kHz on the original tape because the sound equipment in shopping centers are not that good anyway, so no harm done here, I guess?

Great video Mat, loved the music clips too. Recognised all but one of the tracks. Are you planning to upload them all? Would love to listen to them all in their entirety.

Tremendous! Is it worth trying to get the mould off? Will it stop spreading now?

I am most impressed at your ability to think in 3D to correctly orientate the tape the right way up and right side in! Very enjoyable to watch you doing all that. Embarrassingly, I only recognised one of the ten tunes. I hope the week ahead isn't too trying for you - remember that hospitals, like hotels and banks, are entirely organised for the convenience of the people who work in them, not for the people they purport to serve. Stand in line, wait here, sit there - be a patient patient, as I am sure you always are. Thanks, Mat!

Perfect Sunday morning, before-getting-out-of-bed viewing. Thanks.

That's great work you're doing on behalf of the Carts Protection League, Mat.