The Tape Machine

​

We own a very special custom all tube Ampex 351 tape machine. This Ampex 351 was painstakingly revised, modified and converted to half inch 15/30 ips operation for absolute best sound quality by some of the best technicians in the US, a process which took over two years. We wanted to get closer to the sound of the great recordings of the fifties and sixties when the Ampex 351 was the machine of choice, and also have the better quality and lower noise floor of half inch operation at 30 ips. 

We were inspired in part by the great sounding David Jones recordings for Connoisseur Society, recordings which were done to a half inch Ampex at 30 ips, as well as by the James Boyk recordings done in the eighties to a custom half inch Ampex 351 he called the Magnesaurus, at 15 ips. 

Our machine is one of the only half inch Ampex 351 in existence capable of recording at 30 ips, quite possibly the only one at this point, and we think it sounds glorious. It’s also remarkably flat across the audio band (+/- 0.5 dB from 40 Hz to 16 kHz at 30 ips), and has very low wow/flutter (DIN peak weighted 0.03% at 30 ips, 0.04% at 15 ips). 

Our machine has brand new custom heads from Flux Magnetics. Resistors and capacitors have been changed for reliability and sonics, while keeping the original values, so as to stay faithful to the original Ampex design. Resistors, depending on position, include the Z-Foil Texas Component TX2575, Shinkoh, Audio Note, Riken and Takman Rey. Capacitors include VH Audio CuTF, Miflex and Jupiter. We are also using upgraded mechanical parts from Athan. 

The AES EQ for 30 ips operation was implemented by John Chester, who also did a lot of work on optimizing the transport and electronics, as did Ampex specialist Dave Dintenfass. 

This tape machine was used to mix Jerome Sabbagh’s Vintage. Heart was recorded live to two track tape directly to it, by James Farber, at Power Station in Studio C. All our records will be either mixed to this machine from multitrack tape, or recorded directly to it, live to two-track tape.

The Tape Stock

We have tried the three currently available professional recording tape stocks, ATR master tape, SM900 and SM911. They all sound different, and on our Ampex 351, we strongly prefer ATR master tape, so that’s what we use. 

​