"Gather ye reel tapes while ye may, old time is still a-flying-
And this same tape that plays today, tomorrow will be dying."

With apologies to poetry lovers everywhere. Unlike diamonds, magnetic tape is not forever. The deterioration and eventual loss of information stored on magnetic tape is an unfortunate proven fact, and this might happen in as little as 20 years. It is imperative to have magnetic media transferred into the digital domain where it can be kept forever without further degradation.

We can transfer and restore cassettes, 8-tracks, and reels from 3" to 10.5" and have seen everything from studio masters to "Christmas morning coffee table" tapes. Regardless of the source, our digital mastering and restoration technology can provide you with preserved memories that are better-sounding than the original source recordings.

Cassettes - We are often sent commercially-released cassettes of albums that are already available on CD. Please, always check to see if a CD has been released before sending an album on cassette. It will be cheaper and sound better. And if there's a choice between an LP and a cassette, we prefer the LP. It too will sound better.

Mystery Tapes - If you don't know what's on your tapes, we will audition them before we begin restoration work and let you know what's on them. That way you won't have to pay for something you may not want.

Splice Wrecks - Occasionally, a reel of tape will consist entirely of short pieces of tape which have been spliced together. All the splices have dried out and are now falling apart. Every time a splice goes through the machine, it breaks, which means stopping the recording, putting the tape back together, backing up, and starting again. The typical "splice wreck" reel will add about $20.00 to the cost of the project, but it's the only way to recover the tape. See an example.

Sticky shed syndrome is a cause of great concern to tape restorationists. It is caused by the absorption of moisture into the oxide binder. The oxide will actually scrape off onto the non-moving parts of the machine, usually accompanied by a loud squeal. Tapes in such condition can't be played with any degree of safety. However, baking the tape will drive out the moisture in the binder and allow the tape to be played. This is only a temporary fix, but at least it will allow the tape to be transferred to a more permanent digital medium. We bake tapes at a slight additional charge.

Jammed Cassettes - Many fond memories can be found on inexpensive cassettes which are now on year 30 of their 10 year life. A lot of these tapes won't even play anymore. Our success rate with such tapes is 100%.

>>>WE DO NOT ACCEPT BOOTLEGS. NOT GRATEFUL DEAD. NOT ANYBODY.<<<

Deep Sky Audio was chosen by KOPN-FM for their reel tape archive preservation project.
3,000 tapes!

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