The Tape Project: Reel-to-Reel Audiophile Albums

The Tape Project was founded to bring "master tape sound" into the living room. Each release is recorded onto 1/4" half track analog reel-to-reel tape at 15 inches per second. They claim, "You just aren't going to get any closer to the original master, short of buying a record label or two."

The current catalog consists of 10 hand-picked albums, including Sonny Rollins' seminal Saxophone Colossus (1956), Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby (1961), along The Robert Cray Band and Malcolm Arnold conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. There's even a brand new album by Jacqui Naylor that was mastered exclusively for The Tape Project.

The process starts by creating a 1" duplication master from the original analog master tape, which is then dubbed to a bank of finely tweaked Ampex ATR-100 decks. The result is the highest-quality "home format" analog copy possible.

The Tape Project is the brainchild of Dan Schmalle, who is also the driving force behind Bottlehead Corp, who manufacture a range of well respected tube amplifiers and modifies tape decks with the CCIR/IEC1 playback equalization required to play these tapes.

I'll let them explain: "We ended up choosing the Technics RS-1500 as our starting point. They are attractive looking machines, they offer the versatility of both 1/4 track and 1/2 track playback heads and three tape speeds, and most importantly they have what we feel is a superior tape transport path, the isolated loop. The RS1500 uses a servo reel control system combined with dual pinch rollers on a single capstan to maintain constant tension on the tape. This results in very stable, low flutter playback.

The one possible shortcoming of the RS 1500 is its lack of IEC playback equalization. In actual practice this is not such a big issue, because the quality of the playback electronics in all of these late 20th century prosumer grade machines is dismal. The only way to get the full benefit of the sonic quality of Tape Project Tapes is to use better outboard playback (repro) electronics anyway."

The project gurus suggest twinning your modified RS-1500 tape deck with the $4000 Bottlehead Repro tape preamplifier, along with whatever high-end audiophile amplifier and speakers you have lurking in your mansion's listening room.  A charter subscription includes all 10 albums from the 2007 catalog and retails for $2000, including shipping within the USA and Canada. They also offer a Selective Subscription that allows you to choose any six of the ten titles for $1200.

There's no word on the titles lined up for the 2008 catalog, since the team is still working hard to fulfill their current order backlog.

The Tape Project

related:
Bottlehead S.E.X. Amplifier - Get Your Tubes Glowing [possibly nsfw]

Comments

[Alan]

Very cool.

I love me some analog, but my collection of reel to reel machines are a bit more low budget and certainly not up to the standards of the recordings on offer here.

Mostly, the look cool and give me more vintage toys to play with. If I get serious about sound I listen to vinyl, that said if I could afford the equipment I'd definitely be into high end reel recordings as well.

[Brent]

I've really been wanting to hear one of these tapes and decks. I've read quite a bit about them but haven't actually got to hear it yet. A couple months ago I bought a nice reel to reel deck, an Otari MX5050BII. It's a half track play/record machine and also has a quarter track playback head, can run at 3.75, 7.5 & 15 IPS speeds and has switchable IEC/NAB tape EQ. They're built like a tank and you can find them used for very reasonable prices, much cheaper than the Technics machines these days.

[Philip Barrett]

The problem with this project starts with the phrase "from the original analog master tape." It is extremely difficult to track down & verify that the tape being used is the original master or reduction master as it was often known in the 50's & 60's.

In the days of vinyl, once an album was mixed the master tape was taken to a cutting room where further equalization & compression was applied during the mastering process to optimize the sound for the vinyl medium. As the lacquer was made, a tape was also recorded which reflected the changes made to the original master & would itself be used to cut additional lacquers. Generally, at this point the original master tape was returned to the label or artist & oftentimes just to the studio where the recording was done. Sometimes the master tape was considered too frail to leave the studio (albums were often full of edits held together by tape) and the mastering house got a 2nd generation copy right off.

Now the manufacturing facility has the production master they made subsequent copies (now 2 generations away from the original) to distribute to other pressing plants, both nationally & internationally. Pretty soon you have legions of 3rd (& often more) generation copies floating around the world.

In the intervening years labels are bought & sold, studios closed & the original masters become harder & harder to find or verify. However the production masters were plentiful and much easier to track down. Most early CDs were made from these production masters with their vinyl compromises, contributing to the awful sound of many of the early releases.

My point is that claiming to be sourced from original masters is a very bold claim to make particularly regarding the age of these releases. I remember clearly as a tape-op making tens of copies of an extremely well known artist's latest release. The UK, US & Japan got early digital masters (already been through some pretty ropey converters), the rest of the world got 15ips tapes minus any noise reduction!

I remember a producer I worked with ruefully holding up the new to CD release of Evita commenting "well this is great, the masters are still in my basement!"

[Brent]

Philip, are you familiar with Steve Hoffman? He started out at MCA, did the remastering for DCC gold cd's and many other cd's SACD's and lp's. Reading some of his posts at his forum over the years has been enlightening the battles he's gone through to find the true master tape.

He posted that when DCC started the Jethro Tull Aqualung project it took 7 years from the time they requested the master tape until it finally showed up at his door. Nobody could find the right tape and they kept sending EQ'd dubs or safety copies and he kept sending them back. Finally they got ahold of Ian Anderson and it turned out he had the master tapes in his garage!

When they played back the tape for the first time there was a section of tape stretch about 1:25 into the song. Right where he sings "as he bends to pick a dog-end" it sounded like somebody pulled the power cable on the playback deck and it was coasting to a stop. LOL It said it was a nightmare of a project. In the end-result turned out great and it's the holy grail version of album.

[Philip Barrett]

Brent - fascinating site, thanks for info, but hence my skepticism with the re-releases . I've seen some amazing things in studio vaults over the years. Presley 2 tracks in the basement of the Louisiana Hayride, multi-tracks from some of the greatest 70's rock albums at AIR and even Archie Bell masters at an old studio in Houston. I believe that so much material ended up in dumpsters during the collapse of the traditional studio industry in the 1980s.

[Brent]

Philip, you're right about stuff ending up in the dump. Many people over at Steve's forums have worked in the industry and some of the stories they've told are almost beyond belief. Some of those studios had no clue what they had in the vaults and literally dumped stuff by the truck load. A bunch of history that is lost forever because the bean counters thought it was too expensive to pay for proper storage. I bet they'd pay huge money to have some of that stuff back now!