Fe Cr reel to reel tape?

[jma94]

Hello everyone :) I have just found this:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SONY-FECR-7-REEL-REEL-TAPE-SEALED-/350411282371?pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item519623d7c3

On ebay... didnt know about FeCr reel tape... would it be in the "EE" range? or would only some decks be biassed for it/require manual adjustment?

I recently saw one of them go from a UK seller which was used at a BIN for £25. I have found it hard to find any type III cassettes and own none, let alone reel to reel. I know about FeCr Elcaset.. Not sure if it suffered from the Cr layer wearing like the cassete... I know it was a SONY development but have heard about BASF ones aswell.. were the FeCr reels common for professional use?

Enlighten me! :)

Many thanks :)

[Wilhelm]

A ferric-chrome reel tape would need more bias than that required for a standard ferric oxide tape but significantly less than that required for an EE reel of tape. It might even be possible to align many non-EE recorders for such a tape if one could also alter the record pre-emphasis by reducing its boost on the upper limits.

Such a tape is only useful for 3 3/4 ips; there is no benefit for faster speeds. The chrome surface is just as hard as that for chrome cassette tapes, which means that softer heads may show less wear than harder heads, but in all cases there will be no gap erosion from chemical wear or non-uniformity.

I don't believe that BASF produced any ferric-chrome reel-to-reel tape although they did produce Type III ferric-chrome cassettes and pure chrome EE tapes in the quarter-inch format. Loop Master 920 and 921 were chrome bin tapes in both quarter-inch and half-inch formats for professional use only.

[DaveInVA]

I have a spool of that also. It came with my Sony TC-880-2 when I bought it new. It was one of the few r2r machines with a FeCr setting. I wish I still had the TC-880-2 but someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse (but now wish I had) on it about 10 years ago.

Dave

[jma94]

Yeah i did know BASF made FeCr cassettes but they dont do reel to reel FeCr as far as i know and am going to find some info... and yeah i would have thought it could be aligned, with a thin chrome layer and mostly FE. I didnt know it actually had a switch the sony deck, though.

And yeah i think your right about speeds, i reccon 15ips would wear the chrome layer off also.

[DaveInVA]

Here are the Sony TC-880-2 specs:

http://www.allegrosound.com/Sony_TC-880-2_AllegroSound.html

Dave

[Wilhelm]

15 ips won't wear the chrome layer off. The thicker ferric layer is probably not cross-linked for extra adhesion to the base film, and the upper chrome layer is probably cross-linked for minimal rub-off. The BASF Loop Master 920 ran at 300 ips with no problem (although, in all honesty, at that speed it rides an air bearing).

The reason FeCr is not useful at speeds faster than 3.75 ips is that at faster speeds it is relatively easy for a good ferric oxide to retain high frequency wavelengths, and the higher coercivity of chrome is not necessary.

[scotchtape]

I always thought the Scotch "Classic" reels which many of us bought in the second half of the 1970s were ferrichrome?

[df_genius]

Off the top of my head I think the TC-399 also had a Fe-CR setting.

[shotwell]

Has anyone actually used this stuff? I remember seeing it somewhere before. I also remember someone complaining that it sounded like crap on his X-700R.