"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:
Did you really have many problems with dropouts?

Not often. But still one had to listen for them. We had
a third party client who used a British tape (Ilford Zonal)
which was not as good as BASF, Agfa or Ampex.
Copies were often going to overseas agents who
used them to cut disc masters so they had to be pristine.

The answer then is to use decent tape and cut down on the labour involved
in checking copies.

No. The answer is to do it properly. And that's what we did:-)
Every single copy was monitored, and the op (not his/her trainee)
had to sign a QC card which went into the tape box.

You cannot dictate to a customer what tape he uses
for his masters. Some of the material we handled was
from the very early fifties. Ilford was OK from new,
but did not age well. We did not see much of it.
It may also be that the material was not stored in
optimum conditions, and early editing tape oozed
adhesive

We had an excellent score library, and, if you were
doing classical copying, you could order up miniature
scores for the music you would be copying the next
day and these would be waiting in the progress room
for you first thing in the morning. So you spent the first
stage of your recording career listening to masters of
world-class classical recordings on excellent equipment, l
istening to/reading/learning the classical repertoire, and
soaking up the sound. It was amazing!

BTW, if this client master on Zonal had dropouts, just what did your
trainee do about it? (Rubbish snipped)

Every trainee worked with an experienced op who was
ultimately responsible for the material copied in his/her room.
There was also a dept supervisor who moved from room to
room during the day. It was amazingly well organised, and no
doubt very profitable:-)

If there was an anomaly, the progress room manager
was informed. He tried to get another copy, perhaps
from a B master if one was available. Otherwise, the
client would listen to and sanction the copy.
That was standard routine everywhere.

Iain