Remove all tapes from the vicinity.
Standing a few feet (6 if possible) away turn the demagnitizer on.
Walk slowly toward the head with the demag on.
Start at the top, as close to the head as possible, without touching, and slowly move the demag up and down a couple times.
Pull the demag slowly back, and slowly move towards the next head.
Do not turn the demag off until you have moved slowly 6 feet away.

The key word here is SLOWLY.
DO NOT TURN THE DEMAG ON OR OFF WITHIN 6 FEET OF THE HEADS.
Dont forget to demag the guides.

Ooooooooo, you must be old like me?? I went to a neurosurgeon to get my head demagnetized, but they put me through an MRI and really screwed me up.

North is West
Ms. Remy Ann David

I still miss the smell of 456 in the morning.

I DONT miss full record alignments 2 or 3 times a day. 8-)

I DO miss not having to use a peak meter, when tape, and the Neve's bus VU meter kept you legal!!!

See what you did??? Flashbacks, got to love them!!!

look out, Remy; you've awakened the over-40 crowd with that one! :twisted:

I too remember flakey tapes, demaggers, cue tips and denatured alcohol.

Not to mention my volt/ohm meter and calibration tweaker, and Standard Tape Laboratory Alignment Tapes (remember THAT guy's nerdy voice on the intro?!??!). Gad, the stuff we had to do BEFORE even putting a fresh tape into record!

"These kids today" have no idea what kind of every-day maintenance was involved to get that ol' analog dog to speak (properly)! I'm still in awe when I get an analog reel to reel to transfer/cleanup for digital. I know how hard "I" worked on that stuff, but I'm still amazed and thrilled to hear well-done analog master recordings. Thoese were the daze, indeed!!!!

Here's another flashback for you...anyone remember that smell of that rubber idler tire/pinch roller cleaner? UGH!!!!!!

I don't miss analog, either. Not a bit.

Here's one about the kids:

Even though I have about a hundred tweakers in my garage, I needed one in a pinch near the studio.
I walk into an electronics store, ask for a "tweaker", the kid cocks his head like a confused puppy, after about 5 minutes of describing it, he shows me the bin, and tells me these are "minature potentiometer trimming tools".
:lol:

When I worked for Scully, we had the right idea with the 280B and included a tweaker, inside the electronics of the machine! When I worked for Media Sound in NYC, tweaking the 2 inch machines prior to every session was one of my jobs. I actually do miss those days.

I also had the fortunate opportunity while in New York City (through a jingle king friend) to have a personal 45 minute interview with Sir George Martin! It was better than meeting the fabulous four (which I never did since John had already been assassinated nor did I ever meet the other three) It was at that point I learned the difference between American engineers and British engineers. In America, we have maintenance guys and we have recording guys. In Britain, they have maintenance guys who ARE the recording guys! Sir George did not hire or have any recording engineers that did not know maintenance, first and foremost.

British like
Ms. Remy Ann David

In America, we have maintenance guys and we have recording guys

And most maintenence guys I had were washed out recording guys who felt we should bow to their great wisdom, as they took their sweet time diagnosing a Neve module problem when it would have been faster to pull the module from Studio B's Neve and swap it out with mine, and they could tinker on their time not my client's. Damn VRs kept blowing caps.

See Remy, now you've got me rambling..... :roll:

Yeah, TVPostSound, I was one of the few maintenance guys hired at Media Sound that actually also started doing recording sessions for an in-house manager/producer that realized I was also a good recording engineer, who is using other maintenance guys that couldn't record anything outside of a paper bag! And yes, I know what you mean about the other maintenance guys. It was an issue like that at Media Sound with an M79 that none of the other maintenance guys could fix the problem with the playback head shield, that wouldn't work. They kept Looking at Schematics and Discussing Things While I Looked Carefully At the mechanism, replaced a screw and voilà! A similar problem also happened with their headphone system which I also quickly remedied. I really liked working there until I got mugged at 1:30 a.m. in my subway stop after a late session. I said goodbye to Bob Clearmountain, Michael Delugg and the other guys and resigned the next day and moved to Fort Lauderdale!

I need a tan!
Ms. Remy Ann David

tire/pinch roller cleaner? UGH!!!!!!

Trichloroethylene. Are you kidding me? That's what kept me going. :twisted:

Haven't worked on the big Studers and Telefunken etc. We got stuck on the Fostex R-8 and it needed maintenance too and striping if you wanted it to sync to midi. Things are a lot easier nowadays.

I was temporarily out of the biz for a little while in the early 80's, and got back in via a tech/maintenance position in a little studio here in Phila. They were owned by the local classical radio FM station as it turned out, and one thing led to another after that.

Glad I started doing maintenance, though. It was a good to relearn the basics, and it got me centered on the entire process, just as digital was coming along.

I love all the benefits of modern digital, but knowing analog ties it all together. When you know where it all came from, it makes a lot more sense.