ARTICLES
AMPEX TAPESby William Coakley 01/10/2001
My studio policy: no Ampex tape goes in any machine at any time - ever.
Over the 35 years of using thousands of tapes from cassettes to quarter inch, half inch, one inch etc., the ONLY manufacturer whose tape I found not only defective but also caused damage to my machines was Ampex tape.
I had defective tapes from just about every manufacturer but, they never caused damage to my tape decks. Cassettes had the most defects which showed up as dropouts or poor high frequency performance. But, with Ampex tape there were, at times, problems with the coating on the tape.
My first experience, in the late 70's, happened when a bunch of half inch stock gummed up the transport on my 3 track. It was so bad that it actually stopped the machine from moving any tape at all and destroyed the master tracks I had recorded before it locked up the transport. The dealer where I bought the tape said that Ampex had "another" bad run of tape. I discontinued using Ampex tape for years until our local TV station sent some video clips on Ampex tape. It worked fine. But about 4 years ago, a friend brought an Ampex DAT over and we put it in my Panasonic 3400, a very robust machine that had served me for many years without a problem. While the tape was playing, we heard some digital noise and the indication came up on the display saying something like "head cleaning in progress."
After that, the machine never worked properly. So I took it in for service knowing that the Ampex tape had done something since my friend said the tape didn't seem to work right in his machine either ...but thought his machine was the problem. My 3400 never recovered even after a complete cleaning. A year or so after that, another Ampex tape made it into my new Panasonic 3800 and caused it to malfunction giving the same display message as I had gotten on the 3400 years before. Now it doesn't scan properly. Hence, my policy of not allowing any tape with the name "Ampex" in any of my machines.
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