Best Blank 8 Track Tapes

[braxus]

Since I have now got my own Pioneer H-R99 8 track recorder, for fun I will be making up a few blank 8 track tapes and re-recording the ones I have from the past. I suspect the tape lineups are the same from cassette to 8 track, so I looked for common 8 track blanks that are similar to their cassette versions. What I found were a TDK AD tape, some Radio Shack Supertape (silver box with blue tape inside), some Maxell UD tapes, and so on. How do these better tapes sound like on 8 track decks? Someone said that the better tapes will go above 12Khz and make it up to 14 or 15khz. Is this true? I currently have some 80s blue box Supertapes which were the high output versions. PS If anyone has anymore of those blue box H.O. Supertapes, I'm wanting to buy some more.

So what say ye all?

 

[eb2jim]

That is a tough question to answer, especially factoring time into it. Any good name tape would have been decent, and the RS stuff was decent as well, maybe even better when they were the only place on earth you could still buy blanks. But they always have problems lining up with the head just right from deck to deck, and I don't know that most people into 8 tracks are into the audiophile frequency response aspects. A good tape in a good deck with the head lined up sounds great.

The time passage is another thing that I can't discount. A great tape sitting in a warehouse for 25 years with the pads going south is not going to be as good as an average one kept in decent conditions in a closet.

For me a good blank is one that has good guts and hasn't been recorded on more than a couple of times. If you have sealed blanks, you are already ahead of the game. TDK stuff can't be bad. RS was good too.

 

[KentTeffeteller]

Hi,

The best 8 track tapes I have ever used was Maxell LN, Maxell UD, TDK D, TDK AD, and Scotch Dynarange. All of these worked superb recording on a Pioneer machine.