Saturday, July 19, 2008

DES: Bulk tape eraser

What is a bulk tape eraser?. It's a device that can produce an AC magnetic field which will erase an entire magnetic media.

There are different types of bulk erasers depending of the media that will be erased and with different power of erase. This power is measured in oesterds. A higher oesterds value means a higher power to erase.

Here is bulk tape eraser used to make "like a virgin" any 1/4" open reel tape:


Teac E-2 bulk tape eraser

It has just one switch to power on or off the device and a red lamp that shows when it's working.
In the top of the device there's a single spindle where the reel must be placed:




If you want to erase a reel with NAB hub, it's so easy as to use a NAB hub adapter with it like is shown in the next picture:



The correct procedure to erase the tape is:

1- Be sure you are very far away from anything that is magnetic and can be damaged and/or affected by the intense magnetic field generated by the devide, like TVs, videos, external hard drives, computers, watches... etc.

2-Put the tape one feet (more or less) away from the bulk eraser and turn it on.

3- Slowly, close the reel to the bulk eraser and put it in the spindle.

4- Slowly, with your hand, make a complete revolution at least to the reel, so that the powerful part of the eraser affects any part of the reel.

5- Slowly, move away the reel from the bulk eraser until it will be one feet away from it.

6- Turn off the bulk eraser.

The result will be a tape completly erased in just a few seconds.

But, when it's really useful to use a bulk eraser?. For example, when we want to record over a tape that is recorded in half track, using a quater track configuration.

Why?. Because without using a bulk tape eraser, the quater track deck can't erase completly both tracks and the old program recorded in the tape will be audible very low when the new program is between tracks.

MOV: Saw IV

Release date: October 2007










Teac A-3300S

Scotch reel in the left and right side. NAB hub adapters are the originals made by Teac that came with the deck, model TZ-612


Internet Movie Database Link

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

DES: Scotch 10.5" six holes metal blue reel

After some time looking for a pair of these beauties, recently I've adquired them separately.

The design (six holes "in line") was common used by different brands like Scotch and Basf and was also used in the well known Teac RE-1003 and Pioneer PR-101 empty reels.

Here are three shots taken in the Pioneer RT-1020H with ReVox metal silver NAB hub adapters.