Oops! I promised more on the topic of tape formulations for Tuesday and then forgot about it. Amazingly, I think I slipped it past most of you because hardly anyone called me on it. So, without further delay…
Continuing the tech tip from Monday (see TTOTD 6/22/98), the one thing I didn’t have room to speak about was tape wear in rotary head machines. We recommend that, due to how these machines wear, you should stick with the same brand and type of tape for the life of the machine. Tapes used in today’s modern machines put noticeable wear on tape transports from the very beginning. This wear manifests itself as grooves (of the non funky variety) that begin to appear in the various transport components (head, rollers, etc.). These grooves conform to the exact width of the particular tape you are using and are positioned exactly where the tape likes to run in its path through the machine. Given the extremely tight tolerances of the tape tracking in modern digital multitrack machines, it is important that a given tape always “ride” in its groove. If, after putting significant hours on your transport, you suddenly change tapes, it is likely that your new tape will not be happy riding in the groove created by its predecessor. This problem can materialize in a few different ways, but the symptom will almost always be the same: poor or unreliable tracking. This phenomenon is also very hard on the tape and can unevenly strip the oxide (see WFTD oxide above) from the tape, which will eventually lead to premature failure of the tape.
This is not to say that you can never put another tape in your digital tape machine, but you should be aware that the most consistently reliable operation is obtained from choosing a good type of tape and sticking with it.