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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 14th Feb 2011, 6:04 pm   #1
villelaustela
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Default (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

Some years back I bought a nice vintage Akai Tape Eraser Model ATE-7 (photo here). It's a small unit with no other controls than mains switch. I have used it once and erased an open-reel tape which I then played and it was empty.

Yesterday at work I got a pile of MiniDV-cassettes to be erased. I thought of doing that with the Tape Eraser but for some reason the tapes weren't affected at all. As far as I see these erasers have very little to broke down - so what's going on there? The eraser has power on lamp (which was lit) and it made faint humming noise, just as I remember it doing the previous time (when it worked to the open-reel tape). I didn't have any audio tapes around to test the eraser - is there any other reason why the tapes didn't got erased, other than the eraser being faulty?
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Old 14th Feb 2011, 6:14 pm   #2
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Default Re: (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

High coercivity tape?
 
Old 14th Feb 2011, 7:42 pm   #3
BGmidsUK
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Default Re: (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

My thoughts too - I would presume these erasers were designed for ferric tape.


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Old 14th Feb 2011, 10:11 pm   #4
chriswood1900
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Default Re: (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

I believe the small Akai type erasers were for Ferric tapes for Hi Coercivity tapes such as video and data types much more powerful erasers are required companies such as Weircliffe (now closed) made them.
see.
http://www.veritysystems.co.uk/degaussers/Tape.asp
http://web.archive.org/web/200212070...%20Degaussing?
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Old 15th Feb 2011, 1:20 am   #5
TIMTAPE
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Default Re: (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

Yes, MiniDV are Metal tapes. Hard to record and hard to erase.

Unless there is a special need to erase the contents, such as for security, why not just record over them?
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Old 15th Feb 2011, 8:36 am   #6
villelaustela
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Default Re: (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

Thanks!
The tapes are recordings of school lessons by teacher-trainees who usually want their lessons to be recorded. Then the tape is watched once and usually left to me, and I have a quite a few of those. Not really security -class, but it would be preferable not to pass them on without erasing the contents.

I have a stand-alone VHS-MiniDV -recorder at work which I can use for recording over the tapes, I just thought how much faster it would be using the eraser.

Being Metal/Hi-Coercivity does make perfect sense why the tapes weren't erased.

The end of this site chriswood1900 linked was most interesting reading and it gives fe. the following figures:

Type / Coersivity
1/2", 1" and 2" 350
Compact cassette ferric (IEC Type I) 450
Compact cassette chrome (IEC Type II) 750
DV, DVC, DVCAM, DVC PRO D7 1700

Since the eraser was for open-reel audio tapes, the figures above do suggest it might not be strong enough for DV tapes
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Old 15th Feb 2011, 10:58 am   #7
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Default Re: (Open-reel) tape eraser vs. MiniDV tape

I while ago I got hold of some old DC600 data cartridges with 1/4" tape. The tape is pitch black, and back coated. Just for fun I extracted some tape and put it on an ordinary tape reel (gee, how many people will understand what you mean when you say 'ordinary tape reel' these days ), and tried to record on it using an ordinary Tandberg 12. Being high-coercivity tape, the result was less than stellar. Very low output, and very little treble to boot. Well, the tape might be useful for testing tape transports rather than recording I suppose.

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