If you got lost at "reel-to-reel," don't feel bad. This is very Old Tech. Think old-time spy movies, with banks of computers, each with a pair of gigantic circular objects whirring at great speed. Or the hip 1960s bachelor pad of a suave detective. Can you say "groovy?" (Actually, "groovy" goes back to the early days of wax and hard plastic records, in the 1920s, but it made a comeback in the mid-20th century.)
Reel-to-reel tape recording was once the pinnacle of high-end, high fidelity stereo recording and playback. It began in the vacuum tube era (read, expensive to run but excellent for interpreting sound) right through solid-state (the transistor predecessor of the microchip). In the last few years, a very few audio companies have realized that nothing records more faithfully than really good audio tape, and have starting making new machines and tapes for them (read, extremely expensive). These new tapes won't work on the old machines, so not only do you need a lot of money to buy the tapes, you'll need one of the state-of-the-art, new reel-to-reel recorders to use them. (See the article on The Verge.)
However, a lot of the old tape decks and machines are still out there. You can find them in junk shops, garage sales, or (like me) get them from a friend for the price of shipping (to get it out of their garage). We have a number of old reel-to-reel tapes, some of which we used to record our own original music. That's the focus of this post.
Tapes that haven't been played in a while (read, years!) can become extremely fragile. The oxide (read, rust) that magnets in the machine rearrange to create sound can flake off, ruining the tape. I was told by a reputable source (a long-time music producer) not to use the tape recorder to rewind the tape, no matter what, as it could ruin the tape. As far as I know (at this point), the tape I want to copy to digital is in the correct direction. I had one little problem, though: the lack of a take-up reel.
I looked through the old tapes and at last discovered that I had two 7-inch reels with only small amounts of tape on them. I could put the tape from one onto the other one and use the other as a take-up reel. Only, I had to do it without using the tape recorder.
Once cassette tapes were invented, we used to rewind them sometimes by using a pencil or pen (Bic pens work really well) in the center of the spool. It could be faster than using the cassette recorder, and, even if it was slower, it saved electricity. I took the same idea, only instead of a pen, I used a mechanical pencil in the wind-up side and a knitting needle to allow the one from which I was emptying tape to spin freely.
The photo doesn't show the actual process, but you should get the idea. Eventually I used a pencil in one of the other reel holes to allow it to spin a bit faster. It still took quite a bit of time, but the tape itself should be fine.
I haven't begun the transfer process yet, but I'll write another post describing that, once I figure out the best way to connect the reel-to-reel recorder to my computer. (I'll probably use the same piece of equipment I use to connect keyboards and guitars.)
So, if you have an old reel-to-reel and old tapes and want to keep them from losing their oxide coating, you can try the knitting needle and pen trick for winding. It worked great for me!
