Larry, are you finding enough quality tapes to whet your classical appetite?
Hi Kedar,
Short answer: no. Long answer: I did buy a BIG collection from someone who was getting rid of his tapes and machine. It did contain over 50 reels of 1/2" tapes and 130+ reels of 1/4" tapes (all 15ips 2 track). However, fewer than a dozen were classical. My main source of classical has been Ed Pong's UltraAnalogue which are all chamber music recorded in his home studio. Remarkable tapes, but fewer than 40 so far. I also bought almost all of the Opus3 classical tapes (9 albums 18 reels) that they are offering. Tape Project has released 12 reels of classical so far (6 albums), and Horch House-Lutz Precision has released about the same. There are a handful from others (Yarlung, Open Reel, ABC Int'l, Jonathan Horwich, and I got Todd Garfinkle to release his fine Goldberg Variations album on Tape on his MA label.) That's it. I have been working on another company who does very high quality vinyl to do tapes. It has taken close to three years, but I have gotten some encouraging signs. I do have a large number of 7.5ips 1/4 track classical tapes (maybe 500+) which range from poor to excellent, the best still fall far short of the super high standard of the typical 15ips 2 track tape.
One indirect source is Bob Witrak (High Definition Tape Transfer) who has been digitizing tapes for several years now, many of which are 15ips 2 track tapes, typically 1/4", but sometimes even better. He has recently been doing DSD256 on many of them, which sound quite fine. Most of his releases are classical.
At this point I am hoping that Chad Kassem will be able to license the RCA Living Stereo albums he has been releasing so he can offer them on tape.
Extremely unlikely ever to reach even a small fraction of my vinyl collection.
Larry