Open reel storage solutions / bulk tape buy
How do you guys store your box-less reels? I've been trying to deal with a bunch of loose blanks that are currently boxed up in the garage, and today I scored a mountain of what appear to be very nice Ampex tapes, a lot of them unused. Unfortunately, the seller stored them in a location where the boxes got damp, and I had to throw away about 80% of them.
Fortunately, this stuff doesn't appear to be any of the sticky shed nightmare formulas. The tape surfaces are nice and free from each other and there is no sign of problems with the oxide surface coming off. None of it appears to be backcoated. Most have a very black appearance, some have the "rust red" color that seems to appear more often on older tapes.
On an interesting note, three of the tapes are in factory-printed "Ampex Test Tape" boxes. Whether or not they are actually test tapes remains to be seen.
Several of the boxes (including one that was still sealed in the factory plastic bag) have "OPT 663" on a sticker on the plain white box. Unfortunately that number doesn't seem to tell me anything in a Google search.
Edit: I spooled up several of the tapes that obviously had been used. They all appear to be test tapes of some sort, some are long stretches of steady tones, one is comprised of level/pitch sweeps, and another is bursts of static that sweep from low to high level. Most of the damaged and disposed boxes contained tapes that seem to be unused, but several of the used tapes were in nasty boxes. The hand-written box notes (which were nothing but strings of numbers) are gone for those tapes. Only a few have labels on the reels. Fortunately most of the used tapes were in the undamaged boxes.
Since it appears that I'm sitting on a number of test tapes, does anyone have any suggestions on figuring out exactly what they are? One remaining box actually does have some notes referencing bias levels, that's the only writing that made any sense to me.
How do you guys store your box-less reels? I've been trying to deal with a bunch of loose blanks that are currently boxed up in the garage, and today I scored a mountain of what appear to be very nice Ampex tapes, a lot of them unused. Unfortunately, the seller stored them in a location where the boxes got damp, and I had to throw away about 80% of them.
Fortunately, this stuff doesn't appear to be any of the sticky shed nightmare formulas. The tape surfaces are nice and free from each other and there is no sign of problems with the oxide surface coming off. None of it appears to be backcoated. Most have a very black appearance, some have the "rust red" color that seems to appear more often on older tapes.
On an interesting note, three of the tapes are in factory-printed "Ampex Test Tape" boxes. Whether or not they are actually test tapes remains to be seen.
Several of the boxes (including one that was still sealed in the factory plastic bag) have "OPT 663" on a sticker on the plain white box. Unfortunately that number doesn't seem to tell me anything in a Google search.
Edit: I spooled up several of the tapes that obviously had been used. They all appear to be test tapes of some sort, some are long stretches of steady tones, one is comprised of level/pitch sweeps, and another is bursts of static that sweep from low to high level. Most of the damaged and disposed boxes contained tapes that seem to be unused, but several of the used tapes were in nasty boxes. The hand-written box notes (which were nothing but strings of numbers) are gone for those tapes. Only a few have labels on the reels. Fortunately most of the used tapes were in the undamaged boxes.
Since it appears that I'm sitting on a number of test tapes, does anyone have any suggestions on figuring out exactly what they are? One remaining box actually does have some notes referencing bias levels, that's the only writing that made any sense to me.
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