Keeping Reels on Decks

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Zacharia Matilda
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Keeping Reels on Decks

Post by Zacharia Matilda » Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:18 am

For the folks who use tape...do you keep your reels on your decks if you know you will be going back to the same song when you get back to the studio?

I am not a pro so I run into this scenario all of the time. Is there any drawback to keeping reels loaded on the deck hubs other than the difficulty of cleaning heads while the tape is still loaded? Leaving the reels on definitely saves time and I'm also thinking it can help prolong the life of the ff/rew motors.

Maybe I am overthinking this, but I want my tape deck to last as long as it possible can, and I want to baby it as much as I possibly can. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
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drumsound
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Post by drumsound » Wed Jun 15, 2016 12:24 pm

Maybe its paranoia or superstition, but I don't like to leave the building with tape spooled across the heads. I always wind it back onto the reel. If we're taking dinner or something, I wind the tape off, and then clean the tape path when we come back.

I've heard stories of some weird electrical thing going haywire, like a power surge that can end up the the reels spinning and the tap literally flying around the room, or spot erasing something. Often I'll even take the reel off the machine just in case.

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Brett Siler
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Post by Brett Siler » Sun Jun 19, 2016 6:34 pm

On my Otari MX5050 I kept the reels just sitting on the spindle thing (reel shaft) and one day it just snapped off! IT was a bummer because its been rather difficult to find that part.

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