[peel] Vintage Peel - Reel tape format?

[Roger Carruthers]

I think it was pretty much standard practice for 1/4 track machines to be
interleaved (1-3, 2-4), so I imagine these tapes are 1/2 track mono.
I¹ve found what I think may be a 1/2 track mono machine at work, so if you
want to send a tape or two over, I can give it a spin,
Cheers
Roger


On 31/10/2010 22:49, "rockerq@..." <rockerq@...> wrote:

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> Tonight I finally got around to listening to one of the reel-to-reel tapes
> from The Decktician.
> 
> Quality is pretty good, despite the fact that it runs at 3.75ips. The tape
> consists of tracks recorded from John Peel shows, around 1974 - On this
> particular tape John's links have been edited out, although the occasional cut
> off syllable is enough to confirm that they are indeed from Peel shows.
> 
> The deck I am playing back the tape on is a standard consumer "quarter track"
> quarter inch tape deck - tracks one and three are stereo in one direction, and
> tracks four and two are stereo on side two, running in the opposite direction.
> 
> On this tape, when I select stereo playback (tracks one and three) I get one
> track in the left speaker playing forwards, plus another track in the right
> speaker playing backwards. When I reverse the tape I get the backwards track
> playing forwards in the left speaker, plus the original forwards track playing
> backwards in the right speaker.
> 
> I have two theories which would acount for this:
> 
> The tape is recorded in mono half track - with a mono recording taking up half
> the tape in each direction.
> 
> or... The tape is recorded in stereo quarter track, but the left and right
> channels of side one are recorded to tracks one and two, and the left and
> right channels of side two are recorded in the opposite direction, to tracks
> three and four.
> 
> Neither of these are formats I have come across before - anyone else know if
> either format was ever used in commercially available machines?
> 
> Since the audio source in those days would probably have been mono medium wave
> radio, I suspect that this conjecture is irrelevant, and that either way we
> end up with a fairly decent mono recording.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Rocker 
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