ADT "Master Tapes", Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk

[Neal Pomea]

My nephew came upon ADT recordings when clearing out a storage facility and wishes to know if there is a market for them. I told him I would ask here and see if there is any interest.

Dexter Gordon, One Flight Up
Thelonious Monk, Monk's Dream
Herbie Hancock, Takin' Off

There are numbers for each one but I don't know what they mean. Numbers like 15IPS IEC R2 NEW

He has the ADT equipment too.

Please let me know if you have any information or better yet any interest in purchasing them and I can put the two of you in contact. He is not a member of this discussion group.

Thank you!

 

[jazzbo]

15 IPS is the recording and playback speed for the recording. IEC is a type of equalization.

I think there is a market for these tapes. One suggestion may be to query HDTT website, they transfer tapes into high resolution digital and may be interested in purchasing these:

https://www.highdeftapetransfers.ca/pages/contact-us

https://www.highdeftapetransfers.ca/pages/about-us

Edited yesterday at 06:35 PM by jazzbo

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Are you talking ADT as in Artificial Double Track tapes? If that's what we're talking about, I would think that those are simply homemade dubs that add ambiance to the stereo signal. Is that how they used to make artificial stereo from mono tapes?

[Neal Pomea]

Thank you, jazzbo and Kevin, for your helpful responses! I will look further into what ADT means and post here what I find.

[JSngry]

8 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Are you talking ADT as in Artificial Double Track tapes? If that's what we're talking about, I would think that those are simply homemade dubs that add ambiance to the stereo signal. Is that how they used to make artificial stereo from mono tapes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_double_tracking

The technique was first used by The Beatles on Revolver. 1966 was a few years after any of the three records in question, so homemade does seem likely.

Is there any further provenance on the tapes? And what brand is the hardware?

Sony used to make RTR decks that would allow "multictrack" recordings on two-track tape by bouncing one track over to another while recording a new one onto the track that was being bounced. I don't think that this is exactly the same technique though.

And 15 IPS on the home market was pretty rare until somewhere in the 1970s.

So, I was guess homemade, but.. in whose home?

[Neal Pomea]

Sorry, y'all! NOT ADT. ATR Magnetics! See what Google AI says about it. It's supposed to be something of quality between original master tapes that the recording engineer would have and high grade audiophile recordings. My nephew's image explaining it is too big to post here. I can ask him to resize it.

Edited 6 hours ago by Neal Pomea

[Daniel A]

Do they look like this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/1q77oj6/help_me_understand_what_i_have/

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, Daniel A said:

Do they look like this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/1q77oj6/help_me_understand_what_i_have/

So ATR IS ATR Magnetics, the brand of tape.

[pglbook]

Have you tried looking them up on discogs?

That would always be the first place to look to see if there are any for sale on there in order to get an indication of scarcity and value as well as to obtain more information about the particular tapes.

I have never searched for reel-to-reel tapes on discogs but would assume that discogs would have RTR tapes on its site, in addition to the usual vinyl and CD offerings.

Just a thought.

Edited 3 hours ago by pglbook

[Neal Pomea]

3 hours ago, Daniel A said:

Do they look like this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/1q77oj6/help_me_understand_what_i_have/

Yes!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

ATR Magnetics has only been in business since 1996, so these are not vintage tapes.

These are dupes of some kind. If they are dupes of master tapes, they'd have value to many collectors. As long as you kept the sale on the QT (the label can block the sale), you could probably get some good money for them. That said, you'd have to play these tapes to find out if they're duplicates of the session masters and not simply someone's dubs of an LP or CD release.

I am not sure how much music can fit on each tape. There appear to be two reels for each title, so I'd imagine that there's more music than a simple LP dub, but again, I don't know this medium.

The tapes themselves have no info on the provenance.

[Neal Pomea]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

So ATR IS ATR Magnetics, the brand of tape.

Could be.

[JSngry]

Maybe one reel per side? That would depend on the size of the reel and the thickness of the tape.

https://richardhess.com/notes/formats/magnetic-media/magnetic-tapes/analog-audio/tape-timing-chart/

[Neal Pomea]

5 hours ago, Daniel A said:

Do they look like this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/1q77oj6/help_me_understand_what_i_have/

The Reddit poster, simplehuman, is my nephew, it turns out! LOL!