OK First you can call Chris over at Dreamhire. They rent pretty much everyithing you would need. Also there is Toy Specialist and The Rental Company. I don't have there phone numbers off hand but they are all listed.

Thanks Joe for the info. I just got a phone call from this old guy who says that he has a lot of reel to reel recordings made in the 1960s that he wants to transfer to regular audio cassette.

Personally, I think transferring them to CD would be better but I'm guessing he doesn't have a CD player. He says he has a lot of 5" and a few of 10.5" both homemade and "pro". I'm not too familiar with this media but I guess that "pro" means that recording artists had their music also released on reel to reel tape at that time. I'm guessing that it's all 1/4 inch. He doesn't know. I think 1/2 inch was totally pro studio media.

Anyway your info. came just at the right time. I was running out of resources to ask. I went to this guy who sells all kinds of recording media. Maybe you've heard of the store; Carpel Video? So I was thinking "this guy should know; he sells to everybody" but his suggestion was to buy a reel to reel player instead from the Buy and Sell magazine. I also have an audio engineer friend who used to rent but he couldn't recall the name of the place he would get his stuff from.

Do everything in your power to make at least a 16bit digital copy. Cassette is just crap. I would record everything into a hard disc recorder (24bit if available) so you have a quality archive of everything then you can edit it neatly together and make him a cassette copy or whatever else he may want down the road. But please make a digital copy!

Make sure you know what you have when playing back the reels, there are many different reels, stereo, quarter track, 4 track, all sorts of fun stuff. And they all need to be played back on the proper head stack. Also watch for shedding, if you see a build up of tape particles near the head stack STOP! You may need to bake the tapes.

Once you get the reels let me know if you need any help.

Well it seems that I'll be able to get my hands on a 1/4" reel to reel player in a couple of days to help this guy out.

I spoke to this guy again recently and now it turns out that he also has 1" and 2" reels which he recorded at a pro studio. I'm assuming these are multitrack.

Now getting access to one of these machines is really going to be a costly endeaver. I don't know if he'll want to got through with that but still he's going to have to get a reality check. This is what the going rate is to use that type of equipment. Rate = very expensive.

I told him that I'll take the 1/4", which he has a lot of, to start off with.

Yeah, I now about "sticky tape syndrome" and the need to bake the tape in an electric oven to remove the moisture. That will be something else that he will have to get a reality check on in price if it turns out that his tapes have that problem. By the way who has that electric oven in NYC to bake the tapes?

Yeah, that was my idea all along. I can record at 24 bits/ 88,200 Khz or higher if I want.

We have a convection oven here at Classic Sound. If your thinking of renting, I don't know if thats possible. You can always check.

Thanks for the oven offer. Hopefully we won't need it.

While I was surfing the net doing research on reel to reel recorders, I ran across a couple of very unusual analog(sorry "analog", I'm not British) Reel to Reels by the Swiss company Stellavox. They have this one that can play 1/4", 1/2" 5" dia. and 10" dia. reels. 16mm film stock and 35mm filmstock. It also has five interchangable head blocks. That can expand the amount of things I can get work in. I found out it about at audiotools.com and I think I"ll buy it.

Sounds good. Let me know how it works out for you.

I want to get a good quality CD burner that burns 24 bit or higher CDs. Can you cut through the manufacturer marketing hype and recommend a good one?

Also, check this back up drive out. I know it's not made by the Exabyte Corp. but does it meet up with the quality necessary to make CD master DLTs?
Is 7 Gigabytes enough space to contain the data dump of DDP files of say 80 minutes of audio?

http://

Update

I thought I was getting a pro level reel to reel recorder with the Stellavox but it's highest speed is 7 ips. Still it's impressive in what it can handle.
Can you recommend a pro analog reel to reel recorder that can accept 1/4" and 1/2" and run at 15 and 30 ips?