I have an upcoming session with an artist who wants to keep the album all live, very raw. I am expecting it will be a fun session. The material has a classic RnB/blues vibe, so I am considering running some live mixes to GCR‘s circa 1950 Magnecord PT6 along with the Pro Tools multitrack. But which brand of ancient 1/4″ tape to use? Perhaps these circa 1952 audiotape ads will help decide the issue…
As John McEnroe would say, you CAN”T BE SERIOUS! about running a session on 50 year old tape.
I don’t have any experience with working on tape recorders, but it seems to me you could use video tape, which is readily available still as ‘pancake’, if you could bias the machine correctly. A videocassette machine has a stationary head just like a regular audio machine, so the physics are the same. Does video tape have this “sticky shed syndrome” like audio tape?