[quote author="SonsOfThunder"]Does China give a s#@t about what's good for any other country's economy besides China's? Sorry we have hijacked yer thread, Brad. I've been to Opelika before, but I never knew that Quantegy was there! I just got an old 1/4 inch 2-trk up and running for an effects machine. Better snag some tape!
Peace!
Charlie[/quote]
Hijack away! I like freedom of speech enuf to endorse and demand it wherever I go. I *think* I just scored a case of 12.5" reels of 406 for $5 a reel, (I'll see when it gets here,) 4 cases of 10.5" 031 (factory 2nd 456) way cheap, $2.50 a reel, and 2 cases of 632 plastic hub 10.5" at the price I usually pay. I'm not selling mixed down 2 track or 16/24 track 2" masters anymore, just data cd's or dvd's, and RedBook cd-r's on the usual el cheapo discs. Tape's going to be an in house "asset" until, and probably after, the mess gets sorted out. Some body has recently patented a method of dealing with sticky-shed tapes too, Howard Sanner's trying to get the guy to pipe up about it on the Ampex list. I've got 200 7" reels of 631 that's basically schtuck together. If it's a non-destrcutive method (as baking eventually becomes, you can't bake a single tape over and over again.) it might be a boon. Smart going, patenting something like that, fortunate timing.
Dave, by all means don't panic if you don't want to. You do film, right? Mostly indy film stuff on PT? Even if you do that for $$$ exclusively but have a luv for recording audio on tape and you think you've got enuf to last you for awhile check your supplier and see how much they have left tomorrow. The people that come by me to record their anatomically altered accordians are happy with what they hear on 631 so I'm not in much hot water, plus if I had to depend upon the project studio to pay the rent I'd be living in a damned camper docked in the park somewhere. I'm fortunate enuf to have the energy to create the time to do this stuff for fun.
It's put a cramp in my pleasure centers, damnit. I'd be as equally flipped out if the Astro Glide factory shut down. I mean, given the choice, would you buy Chinese toothpaste? Who the hell knows what's in Chinese toothpaste, for all you know everybody's dead grandmother in Shanghai province has had their knee caps ground into a "gentle abrasive" that they squeeze onto their toothbrushes twice a day, fer chrissakes. I'm not buying Chinese tape, even if it's on the market. Get your heads lapped by John French more than once a year and you have to sign a friggin' loan. BUY heads from John French and you have to sell a parcel of land. Tape recording is going to probably be an activity of the same guys that lease Porsche's and Benz's, and it pisses me off because it was this perfectly charming bricoleuer activity unti Xmas week last year. It sucks. And as you aptly say, $10K worth of blank tape isn't going to change much.
BUT if the bean counters at whatever bank or corpo that force'd Quantegy to close bother to take a look at any vendor's tape sales this week, maybe they'll hear it as a clarion call. I'd bet a paycheck that this is what happened: Q was in deep debt and had a severley crippled cash flow, and a big buyer stiffed them last month for enough $$$ that they wouldn't have been able to make payroll in January w/out having to significantly increase their debt service; their bank said NO WAY and slammed it shut.
Don't be naive about a factory re-tooling. Nobody's going to invest the billions (millions is a cottage industry thing these days, it would cost a ton of dough, in anycase) that would be needed to retool an open reel audio tape slitting facility. It won't happen. Some investment group's going to have to be smart enough to get ahold of that Quantegy tooling and not let it get scrapped like the Emtec/BASF slitting machinery was.
