Reel to Reel pre-recorded tapes

[carlane3]

Hello all,

Anyone know of a place besides Ebay that one can buy pre-recorded reels?

Len

 

[dr8track]

Hello all,

Anyone know of a place besides Ebay that one can buy pre-recorded reels?

Len

Ebay would most definitely be your best bet. You could do a Craigslist search on one of the websites that accesses all Craigslist ads nationally, but even that would be a long shot.

 

[CobraJet]

I've had a daily search on eBay for open reel tapes for a few months. To date I have bought zero tapes! They were either too expensive, too cheap (read questionable), or nothing I wanted. YMMV. Good luck in your search.

 

[ndiamone]

None of the used-record chains will understand or care what they are or want anything to do with them anymore than they want anything to do with old 45's 78's cassettes, 8-tracks VHS LaserDiscs Betamax or any other dead technology.

Your best bet is to find a local shop in a big city tourist area or something in an antique mall near a major university which - apart from having his shop NOT be the primary - or even any - source of his income - whose owner is both long in the tooth as well as an audiophile.

But then that can backfire if you are not careful.

The reel-world on eBay is pretty much dominated by the Reel Sisters - Reel-lady (Debbi) and O_Jayne (Jayne) - both of whom inherited HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of tapes from their late father - split them evenly to start their eBay businesses - and then just fly around the reel to reel world like vultures snapping up everybody's `lot sales' before they're even done listing them - to the point that - since their ``automatic bids'' are so much higher than anybody would ever bid - they get them irregardless - and then spend their time showcasing each one in whatever collection they get.

Lately - the only ones I've been getting have been from sons of former hobbyists who heard about their predatory practices and would sooner GIVE them to me than SELL them to a girl like that just so she can make money. (I still end up having to pay - just a lot less than buying from the Reel Sisters.)

So there's been times that the Old-Boy Network still functions.

 

[Circular Vibes]

While there isn't a lot out there, I have seen reels and 8tracks on discogs.com and gemm.com while looking for quad records.

 

[ndiamone]

However most Gemm etc sellers have zero idea what they have - or care. Most of `em will sell you their whole stock for a pittance - with the stipulation that you take whatever other customers they get who are trying to sell their reels and 8-tracks. i did that for a few years til I ended up with eight thousand copies of all the same Readers Digest Time Life and Longines Symphonette tapes as everybody else had LP's of the same thing they also couldn't give away.

Although somebody sent me a Kiss: Alive II and ABBA: The Singles: The First Ten Years both at 3-3/4 and both of which I have on analog stereo laserdisc. I'm just going to peel the ``3-3/4 IPS'' sticker off of both of `em so it reads ``7-1/2 IPS'' and then record from the laserdisc onto better tape through my own reel deck and sell `em on eBay.

Yes I'm going to say they are not the King Records (Japan) editions but that's all. There's all kinds of ``mistake'' dubs of things that got dubbed by the real duplicators that say 7-1/2 and are actually 3-3/4 and vice-versa.

Hell I have a Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits on a EMI UK Q-8 that not only is quad (well the backing tracks in left-and-right rear and the vocal in the front same as the Sound of Music Q-8) - but it's also dubbed at 7-1/2 instead of the normal 3-3/4 AND spread out over 2 Q-8's that look exactly identical - except one plays Side 1 and one plays Side 2 three songs on a track.

I bought I dunno a half-a-dozen Q-8's from a guy at a swapmeet years ago and he threw in this set for free and I forget now how many others that were also mis-dubbed at 7-1/2 so that nobody could play `em.

Well a Technics quad recorder plays `em just fine if you disconnect the muting circuit when pushing Fast Forward - which plays at 7-1/2 IPS being I can wind an old radio station cart tape into a 8- track shell and it plays fine.

So after inheriting a number of leftover unreleased half-inch 4-track studio tapes and making Q-8's and Q-R's out of those and passing em around - I started to make half-inch 4-track quad masters out of whatever else I could find and started giving `em to guys as ``truck stop tapes''.

You can do the same on your own reel deck - get the NAB hub 7 inch reels - better tape and the adhesive tinfoil reel labels that will print in a normal laserjet and have whatever you want.

Or find out if anything or anybody remains of The North American Reel Society which did the same thing.

 

[cupboy]

The reel-world on eBay is pretty much dominated by the Reel Sisters - Reel-lady (Debbi) and O_Jayne (Jayne) - both of whom inherited HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of tapes from their late father - split them evenly to start their eBay businesses - and then just fly around the reel to reel world like vultures snapping up everybody's `lot sales' before they're even done listing them -

I bought a couple of tapes from these women. Poor quality tapes, and poor packaging. Haven't bought a reel off ebay for years now. Don't even look at 'em anymore.

The best tape I ever bought was a White Album Volume 2, brand new sealed for $125. What a steal that was.

And has any one ever noticed that creep from Canada who buys reels, usually Beatles, and then re-sells them for a jacked-up price, claiming he has verified them. Yea, sure. They aren't even neatly wound, and he's played them.... not.

 

[ndiamone]

They aren't even neatly wound, and he's played them.... not.

I can't TELL you how many guys - and the odd girl - that have taken my Introduction to Recording Arts class at the local Silicon Valley Junior College at which I contract - vs taking one from one of the other contracted professors - for the SOLE reason that I'm the only one that starts his students off with a basic (albeit abbreviated) course in physics (acoustics, electronics and the principles of analog recording) and an abbreviated Music 101 class before moving on to the actual instruction in recording arts and sciences.

So many of these guys come in asking me things like `how do you make a tape look new when it's used?' i.e. how do you create a Library Wind from something that came in on a Scatter Wind without having to sit there real-time and play it - or at least play Side 2 back to Side 1.

As soon as they find out that there are no consumer decks that perform that action - but that there ARE a number of professional and semi-pro decks which offer that feature - my class size used to drop to about half or less compared to what I started with.

So now I sell a handout in the bookstore for $11.95 answering all the FAQ's of guys who drop out halfway through the first semester - and since then everybody's been happy. The serious guys come to class and want to learn the trade the way it was practiced in the 50's and 60's and the wannabe's and fly-by's buy the book and go back home about their business.

Yes a good percentage of guys also take the class over again from one of the digital professors - and a good many of the kids who started with one of them come to my class - since you can take the same class up to six times (eight if you count Directed Study) - and the quality of musicians and engineers in Silicon Valley have improved considerably since then.

But not the record and tape salesmen on eBay.

 

[66Grandeguy]

I've bought 6 and made a few from my Q8's since I got my Akai 1800DSS a few months ago. The best score was a sealed copy of Buffy Ste Marie's first quad attempt in 1969-Illuminations. You just have to accept the fact that these are rare and pay the price. it kind of hurts all right. I find if you have a a couple of beers it give the courage to do something kind of dumb. Worth it? Not sure, but kind of fun.

 

[EMB]

Just as I've found Q8's mixed among the usual stereo not only at fleas and thrifts but at fairly normal used record/CD stores, you're just as likely to get lucky with reels, except for this: any reel is going to be far less common than any Q8 or cassette tape, just as a VHS tape is easier to find than a Betamax version. Quad reels, I suspect, were made in fairly limited numbers even for strong selling titles in the other formats, so it's scant wonder you either have to do a lot of seeking and traveling (with luck, natch) or pay the price for reels from legit dealers who know what they have.

Regardless, to be a collector of anything with any degree of seriousness, you need modest (if not deep) pockets, and a lot of time to track things down.

Good luck!

ED

 

[ndiamone]

Well some fool yesterday at the swapmeet wouldn't take no for an answer. He bugged me every hour on the hour from 4:AM in the morning as a tag-along to another dealer who was setting up same as me - all the way to the 2M cleanup whistle - and even on til the 4M clearout siren.

That Patsy Cline mis-dubbed two-8-track set of her Greatest Hits I discuss up above - started off with $100 cash on the barrelhead at 4:AM in the morning and by the clearout signal he'd rounded up four more so I took pity on the kid and let him have it for that.

His father came over - boiling at the top and steaming at the ears about the price - until I told him A) that the kid had been bugging me all day about it and B) to take the tape to any 8 track player on the lot and try to play it.

He did and complained it played too slow - and couldn't hear the vocal (he was playing programs 2 and 4) and then I played it on my Technics 858 Q8 deck - at the original 3-3/4 speed. Guy's father never heard anything like it - vocals coming from the front with almost no music and stereo music coming from the rears with almost no vocal - still slowed down.

Then I deactivated the MUTE circuit and pushed the FAST FORWARD button on the deck - came up to speed and said `There you go. Reel to reel fidelity from an 8-track - and surround besides.'

Then he wanted to know if I had any different titles in the same ``mis-dubbed'' format - which I did so he paid me another $1500 to get another six titles - one of which was entirely too new to even have been released on a STEREO 8 track nevermind quad (Chess: the Musical on Record - 1984) played off an American Reel Society 7-1/2 IPS dub, decoded through a Sansui 10 decoder and recorded onto a half-inch 4-track at 15 IPS before being dubbed down on the Fostex onto the quarter inch loop tape and loaded into two TDK Q-8 shells.

Fortunately that was the last swapmeet yesterday because in a couple months it's all going to be bulldozed so they can put up a mall. But he'll enjoy it.