On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 17:02:49 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Bill Wright wrote:
Stephen wrote:

My estimate would be 30 minutes at 3 3/4 inches per second, mono, 10
kHz frequency response, signal to noise ratio 40dB.

My little tape recorder had a non-standard speed of 4ips and also had
the tape wound in a funny way so it played backwards on a normal
machine. For tapes I used to strip down 1/2" computer tape. My uncle
worked at IBM and he used to get it for me.

Bill

There was one from Shoppertunities? which had no capstan so ran at a
different speed depending on where the tape was on the reel...

Happy days.

I bought a similar portable battery powered 'tape recorder' about
half a century ago (ISTR it was a whole 12 quid). The recorder's long
since been chucked out but I still have a few tape recordings that
were made on that machine (3 inch spools with 600 feet of triple play
tape).

I recently auditioned some of them on my ancient Akai M8 (1 7/8, 3
3/4 and 7 1/2 ips speeds). The 1 7/8 ips speed is too slow with the 3
3/4 ips being too fast (but better sounding than too slow). The speed
variation due to reel table drive was nowhere near as obvious as I'd
have expected.

One of these days, I'm going to digitise them by playing them back at
3 3/4 ips on my venerable Akai GX630DB tape deck so I can post process
them back to some semblence of their proper playback speed.
--
Regards, J B Good