About Off Brand Reel to Reel Tapes, with Gene Bohensky of Reel to Reel Warehouse

In this short video we will discuss Off Brand Reel to Reel tapes - the companies that made them, product lines and production history. We'll review which tapes to look for, which ones might have problems, and how they will perform today. Tapes included are Shamrock, Emerald, Radio Shack's Concertape, Melody, and private label tapes from Audio Magnetics.

[@brianwilliams9408]

I have never had a problem with my old Concertape. Even the pre-recorded tapes Radio Shack would sell were made on Concetape and they still sound good today. The blank tapes were satisfactory. Nothing great, but mine have held up really well.

[@brianwilliams9408]

I live in California and had a few Audio Magnetics brand tapes. The 1200 foot one in the light orange/red box with "Air" printed on the back sounded very good. Mine still play perfect. The green one, the 1800 foot tape suffered from squeal. Even when it was new! So stick with the 1200 foot tape.

[@wgrantha4438]

If I want to make a good sounding recording I’ll usually by a tape from you but if I’m recording something non critical I’ll buy a tape at the record store. The quality of the tapes is all over the place. I’ll definitely be ordering some ampex 341 tapes from you soon

[@IllyaLeonovMorganFreepony]

The only tape I have banned from using (so far, I am sure there will be others) is Concertape. Every single one I have attempted to use has left gobs of black residue all over my machine.

[@animalcorvair]

have lots of concert tape ..not one bad one

[@mjg263]

Lafayette had their own brand of tape which I suspect was of the junk variety. With Shamrock you truly didn’t know what you were getting - sometimes it was excellent, sometimes it was just fair but it always seemed to work. I had a few reels of Shamrock that would randomly trigger the auto-reverse function only on my older Akai decks like the M10 and X201D. I suspect the tapes were of the graphite backed variety you spoke about. Those older Akai decks used a transistorized buffering circuit to detect the reversing foil on the sensor probe instead of a simple relay coil to ground, so I assume the impedance of the graphite tape became low enough at certain points of the tape to activate the input transistor and trigger the reversing circuit (probably due to uneven coating). They would work fine on my TEAC and Pioneer reversing decks, but on the older Akai decks they would randomly trigger reverse lol!

[@ReeltoReelWarehouse]

Lafayette might have been made by Audio Magnetics, or another brand at the time, but every box I received had a different style reel and tape formulation in it. That's interesting anecdotal evidence about the graphite backed tapes...that makes sense. They make a mess!

[@wgrantha4438]

Have you ran into any “Recordio Gold line” tape?

[@wgrantha4438]

Also what is instrumentation tape?

[@animalcorvair]

i have a lot of realistic tape an they still sound good