Message Board

You can buy direct from MRL
http://home.flash.net/~mrltapes/

They have a guide to choosing the correct tape:
http://home.flash.net/~mrltapes/which-cal-tape.html

The input current on TL074s may be lower, but the power supply current may not be. I've noticed that TL074s will often run hot to the touch even though they are otherwise operating properly.

These guys make really nice stuff. Maybe a little more expensive, but very well made.
http://www.lansing-enclosures.com/

Electricide wrote:awful. just awful.

Can you elaborate? What was your experience with these?

Also, tin-only solder can produce "tin whiskers", which can lead to eventual circuit failures.
http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm

Unless the circuit board never worked right in the first place (which I doubt), the PCB layout must be correct and the schematic is missing a connection dot. Don't start hacking traces. Try replacing Q4, then the capacitors and finally the resistors associated with the erase circuit until it starts ...

Probably a low pass filter to suppress RF noise.

Thanks, Joe. Someone else I asked suggested it might also be a JH-16 or JH-24 stack.

I'm sure an inexpensive scope will be fine. In analog audio applications you will rarely ever need a bandwith of more than 1 MHz. I doubt if you will find any scopes for sale with less than 20Mhz bandwidth. Try to find one that has solid controls (no flaky switches), accurate timebase and a sharp di...

I received an extra head stack when I recently bought an MCI JH-110 8 track machine. The connectors are different from the MCI head stack, though, and the heads are spaced differently as well. Can anyone identify the machine that this stack is meant for? http://24.121.104.228/~pjwhite/tapeheads/dscn...

I've found a couple of interesting sounds out in the desert. 1. An old mining cable-car cable running down the side of a mountain. Very long. Stand near the top of the cable and give it a tap and it creates a cool sound, very boing-y, something like some of the Star Wars sound effects, only more int...

Interesting article on page 10 of Nagra's newsletter:

http://www.nagraaudio.com/doc_en/NagraNews_25.pdf

... About recording army ants and burrowing bees with a Nagra ARES PII digital recorder.

I believe Stan Ricker is still in the business. He does half speed mastering. Good stuff.
http://www.rickermaster.com/Default.htm

Does anybody else see the humor here?

I don't think it's so much that tape is/was expensive (it was, even back in the day) -- it's more a problem of how much tape will fit on a reel. Let's say you have a big reel of 3600 feet of tape (43,200 inches). At 30ips, that would last 1440 seconds or 24 minutes. That's enough for one side of an ...