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Sometimes, Seeing Is Believing!
Mostly, the recordings we deal with day-to-day are your average, garden-type,
much-loved records or tapes. A little wear, a little tear, a bit of dust, maybe
some scuff marks, but essentially playable.
Sometimes, though, the loving stops and the storing starts - and who knows
what goes on in the garage (or basement, or roof-space or attic) at night? Or in
a thunderstorm? Dog kennel? Hot day in the shed?
We'll always try and help out when things get messed up. Mostly, we can do
wonderful things with broken recordings. Sometimes, unfortunately, we can't. Or so
we've been told. So far, we haven't found a problem we couldn't come up with a
solution for.
From time to time, we'll put up a photo or two of some of the more
interesting - and challenging! - recordings we have to deal with. (With the
owner's permission, of course, and we'll never divulge or give away any
identifying information).
There are a couple of examples of the kind of serious damage that no-one else
anywhere else could help with at the bottom of this page.
We were able to help in each case.
Obviously, some damage results in parts of the recording disappearing, and we
can't really do much in terms of replacing missing audio, but sometimes we're
lucky, and you never know if you never try!
We've also included some simple do's and don'ts for these kinds of
recordings, to help you give us the best chance of recovering the
audio.
DO:
- ...find all the pieces. If you're not sure where
they are, try slipping a stocking over your vacuum nozzle and run it over
the area where the damage occurred. Even tiny slivers can help us restore
more of the recording.
- ...put the pieces in a ziplock bag. It's best if
large pieces are packed separately, to stop the little bits getting busted
further.
- ...wrap each large piece (and groups of smaller
pieces) separately, and bubble-wrap each piece so they don't bash together
during shipping.
- ...securely pack the disk with high-density foam
next to the play surface (see our shipping page for more details), to reduce
the possibility of more flaking or damage during shipping. An hour spent
carefully packing and wrapping can save time and effort, and result in a
much better recording recovery!
DON'T:
- ...try and fit the bits back together. It's
probably OK if you're checking to see if any bits are missing, but just
butting the edges together can further damage the mating edges, and can
flake off even more of the surface layer. This is critical with glass/gelatin
recordings. Lay it out on a chux or butcher's paper and see if there's
anything big missing, but be gentle and don't try to force-fit, ever!
- ...try and glue the bits back together, and
especially not with "superglue" (or any other cyanoacrylate or epoxy resin)
- they're the most unforgiving glues of all. The risk is that superglue will
find one spot between each part and create a perfect bond at that instant-
and if it's misaligned when that happens, the only thing you can do is break
it again. Not good. Epoxy glues are just as bad, as they tend to take a long
time to cure, and while they do, they will ooze and leak all over the bottom
of the recording. Not to mention what some epoxy resins will do to
plasticised polymers (hint: dissolves).
- ...chuck it! (Not even if it looks like rubbish).
We really can do amazing things with recordings, as long as we get them
while they're still vaguely playable.
The Gallery
Dog + Tapes = Dog's Dinner
This bakelite 78 had been sat on. The good news was that we recovered all audio and were able to minimuse the gap damage.
The bad news was that a previous repair attempt had left large areas of cyanoacrylate resin (superglue), which leaked under the surface coating and was absorbed into the matrix (carbon filler), swelling the edges and partly dissolving the surface. This is a typical example of the type of damage lacquer recordings (shellac, gelatin, or plasticised polymer) suffer from.
The surface compound shrinks over time, and tends to shrink both laterally (around the disk) and radially (in towards the centre). The substrate (metal disk of aluminium or steel) is visible through the gaps.
This means that the weakest points are the grooves, and this kind of damage is really tough to deal with, as usually at least 2 grooves are completely damaged in each area (the inner side of the outermost groove edge is missing, as is the outer side of the innermost edge).
In this instance, we were able to fill the gaps with cast blanks, scribe grooves, and recover the entire recording.
Luckily for us, the gaps were primarily in the chorus, so we could seamlessly mix in the previous chorus, and the results were indistinguishable from what we'd have if there were no damage at all. This type of problem is fairly typical of flex damage. Enough of the recording hangs over an edge (table, box, or floor) for someone to stand on it or put a heavy object on it, tearing the vinyl or warping the metal substrate on older lacquer disks (like this one).
We recovered all audio with minimal problems by playing and recording backwards (so the stylus didn't follow the crack), then reversing the digital data (which is completely lossless, one of the advantages of digital recovery!).
Skips were recovered by slowly (16 RPM) reverse and forward playing over the areas worst affected and patching in those samples as needed. Glass/gelatin recordings are extremely hard to handle, even when they haven't dissolved on their own.
The glass isn't tempered, so it shatters completely, and the gelatin coating can't be cleaned by normal means (it literally dissolves in water, so humidity is a huge problem as well).
This recording has been recovered (both sides) with minimal audible problems.
This is what we would consider the worst kind of damage, and unless we get all the bits, they can be difficult to restore.
Believe it or not, we were extremely lucky here - the customer managed to find nearly every piece of the recording. Most older recordings (pre-vinyl) suffer from a tendency to fracture when hit on an edge. Vinyl deforms and rebounds a little, but bakelite and glass don't! (Well, actually they do, but not so you'd notice).
In this case, some modelling wax and careful scribing left less than one tenth of a second total audio missing. Many 78s have quite a long lead-in, so sometimes the damage doesn't affect the programme material. But we try not to rely on luck. Actually, the film didn't get damaged, but you can easily see the amount of corrosion evident on the aluminium spool. The problem with this kind of damage is that the oxidation compounds are soluble and quite alkaline, which badly affects the film stock if it's left too long. There are two separate tapes here, believe it or not. In 14 pieces. And quite a lot of saliva, plastic, and food particles besides.
We were able to splice and recover all the audio data, with a couple of minutes "missing".
We didn't go looking for the missing bits, as they had already passed through (think about the path traveled by the missing bits from the dog's mouth...) and gone.
This bakelite 78 had been sat on. The good news was that we recovered all audio and were able to minimuse the gap damage.
The bad news was that a previous repair attempt had left large areas of cyanoacrylate resin (superglue), which leaked under the surface coating and was absorbed into the matrix (carbon filler), swelling the edges and partly dissolving the surface.
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