24 (16) track 2" stack as an 8 track mod? JH-24?

[Tibbon]

Would it be possible (within reason) to wire up a 16 or 24 track as an 8 track in order to gain the benefits of the track width on an 8 track (sound, noise, response, etc)? More likely, how possible would this be on a JH-24? Would be be possible to make it switchable? I know that you can play back an 8 track tape on a 24 track, but wasn't sure if you could basically do it the other way around. I'd assume that of course the machine would have to have really good alignment, but I'd want to get it aligned/calibrated perfectly anyway.

[Berolzheimer]

Do you mean 2" 8 track? I believe it's doable but depends on the machine, there can be issues with the bias amps being beefy enough, and probably other things. Obviously you'd need a different headstack. There's come info here:

http://www.jrfmagnetics.com/index.ht...ateanalog.html

As for playing back an 8 track tape on a 24 track machine I'm not sure what you mean....I hope not 1/2" 8 track.

[Tibbon]

Thanks! I was hoping to be able to keep the same heads if possible (don't have a machine at the moment, but I'm shopping a bit). I've seen the 8-track 2" stack (actually a 9 track for SMPTE stripe, which is really nice) on the JRF site before.

And yes, I was talking about playing back an 8 track 2" tape on a 2" 24 track machine, not a 1/2" tape. I think I remember doing that at one point when I had a JH-24 and some guy wanted to dump some old tapes to PT.

It would just rock my world to have a 24 track that I could basically turn into an 8 track with the flip of a switch. You're right, I might have to beef up the electronics a bit to get them to drive (or be driven by) a wider track, but if I get a JH-24, I'll probably be resoldering moltex connectors, replacing sockets, recapping, and working on the power supplies for quite a while before I really get it running well.

[Berolzheimer]

How are you going to do it with the same heads? I suppose you could just record track one on 1,2,& 3, track 3 on 4,5,6, etc, then you wouldn't have change anything on the machine at all, just mult the signal going to the machine. Your azimuth has to be really on though to avoid HF loss.

[Sounds Great]

Multing to multiple tracks won't really gain you anything, just more signal, same as turning up the volume on one track. You still go through the electronics for each track so you get multiple degredation of the signal with each extra amount. Really a bit of a wash. I have wondered about this before, I think the only real advantage is if there were any tape drop outs that hit (one part of the tape) you would reduce the effect of that drop out.

You would benefit with better sound if it is actually 8 track, but it would be a completely different headstack, and I think a different set of electronics. There are some issues with low frequency and head gap widths when using such wide tracks. It is pretty sweet but expensive I think. 16 track on 2 is about as good as it gets, I bet the increase in fidelity beyond that is probably marginal. I've never tried it though. Fat bass and drums I'm sure!

[Berolzheimer]

Originally Posted by Sounds Great

Multing to multiple tracks won't really gain you anything, just more signal, same as turning up the volume on one track. You still go through the electronics for each track so you get multiple degredation of the signal with each extra amount. Really a bit of a wash. I have wondered about this before, I think the only real advantage is if there were any tape drop outs that hit (one part of the tape) you would reduce the effect of that drop out.

Actually you would gain signal to noise ratio. The program signal from the 2 or 3 identical tracks would sum in phase, but the tape hiss & amp noise would not.

[Sounds Great]

Originally Posted by Berolzheimer

Actually you would gain signal to noise ratio. The program signal from the 2 or 3 identical tracks would sum in phase, but the tape hiss & amp noise would not.

I'm not understanding this. Why wouldn't the tape hiss & amp noise sum the same as the signal?