Does a bulk eraser generally do a better job at erasing content and noise than an erase head, or does it depend on the quality/model of the bulk eraser? What model is yours?there is something special about listening to a well set up r2r. i have a bulk demagnetiser that i use which does the trick with a quick head clean before record/play
I don't have it to hand right now but I'm 99% sure my A3440 hard copy owner manual says it was setup for Maxell UD. However the manual I downloaded online says "Factory adjusted for ScotchMaster Tape 10R-3600 but can also be used with Scotch 250, Maxell UD, Maxell UDXL, Maxell LN, Sony DUAD, Sony SLH, TDK AUDUA L, TDK AUDUA T".Richard
All noise should be erased during a fresh record ( the erase efficiency is stated as -65dB @1k )
So it should be silent, but new bias noise could be present if the Bias is not set correctly for the tape type in use.
Magnetised tape heads can also increase background noise.
Alan
did you compare the noise at the end of the recording with the noise of a part of factory-fresh or bulk-erased tape, or with head-erased tape?
I didn't try recording silence with the input knobs set to zero, would this help to narrow down the cause of the increased noise floor?
Yes, I thought I could essentially treat the deck as a 2-channel quarter track machine, flipping the tape over to record on tracks 1 and 3 on each side. Did I mess up?Richard when you say A side and B side are you flipping the tape over ?, you shouldn't be as the the 3440 is meant to be a 4 track all in the same direction for musician doing a multi track recording
I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting splitting the amp's output so that the left channel goes to inputs 1&2 on the deck and the right channel goes to inputs 3&4 on the deck? If I did that then I'd need to play the deck through a mixer to mix it back down to 2-channels before outputting that to my amp?If you recorded 1&2 as one channel and 2&4 as the other you should have something fairly close to a half-track. Bleed shouldn’t be an issue, there is plenty of room on quarter inch tape for four tracks. The problems came with the later quarter inch 8 tracks.
HAD it since the early 70s and it was 2nd hand, made by Osmabet its worked perfect since then. ive replaced the mains cable, in todays market of old tapes etc the difference can be heard. i also have 2 from ferrograph one is smaller labelled defluxer by wright and weaire. use ferrograph for the headsDoes a bulk eraser generally do a better job at erasing content and noise than an erase head, or does it depend on the quality/model of the bulk eraser? What model is yours?
Does it depend on the levels the tape is recorded at?
It's not entirely clear from that excerpt how 'hot' the tape was hit when recording those drums, but in the section immediately preceding that the engineer says he tries not to let levels go above 0dB.