Newb tape question

[altbrewer]

I just got my first R2R and the seller threw in 3 tapes he had previously recorded on. I am not sure what brand of tape it is, but he mentioned Quantergy 456 and 2 of the reels are so marked. Anyhow, the tape has a brown shiny side and a dull dark gray side. Which side is supposed to be against the record-play head? My assumption is that the dark dull side has the magnetic oxide and should be against the heads, but these tapes are spooled so that the shiny side passes the heads. They sound okay when played, so maybe my assumption is wrong.

I did spool one tape onto a reel so that the dull side would be against the playback head, but the music was then only in one channel and didn't sound as dynamic and had no high frequency tones.

I don't really care about the music on the tapes as I plan to record over it, I would like to know for sure which side of the tape I should be recording on. This seems like such a basic question I could have found it on the web, but I have yet to see anything that explicitly shows or describes the answer to my question.:headscrat

Thanks

 

[RAID10]

The shiny side goes against the heads. The other side is most likely the backcoated side.

 

[kopferkingel]

The shiny side goes against the heads. The other side is most likely the backcoated side.

True for the back coated tapes! When the tapes are not backcoated, it starts to be quite tricky. I happen to have many tapes where the shiny side does not go against the heads. It depends. Should the situation be really desperate about recognizing the correct orientation, one can always try to observe the splice between the tape itself and the leader tape. Sometimes there is a splicing sticker and this tends to be oriented FROM the heads so that only the clear tape splice goes against them.

 

[MRL_Audio]

Was asking myself that same question today based on other posts in other threads. I have some tapes where the shiny side of the tape should NOT be against the heads and the dull side holds the recorded tracks. Others just the opposite. Since all of the tape I have was used before I got it and is on the reel I just leave well enough alone and play/record with them. No issues. If it does get reversed can it damage the heads or track? Just curious.

 

[Numistrek09]

Not that i know of, but i imagine it can dirty up the heads nicely if the backcoated side is passing over them.

 

[jlb2]

Hi, it is very easy to find which side of a tape is the oxide: it is the side that you can record on. On the other side it doesn't work, or very faint and muffled at best. The few seconds it takes to check will not cause any harm to the heads. For the 456, the oxide is the brown shiny side.

I have seen very few cases of tapes spooled the oxide side out, so your best bet is to play it as it is, and try twisting it only if it doesn't record as it should.