talk to the person running your session and ask their thoughts.

short answer is if the tape from your friend really is in a fine condition, it's probably fine.

long answer is maybe the person running your session is all set up for one calibration and offering this deal to reuse his tape since his machine is all set up for it and he doesn't have to recalibrate - which if he has an older machine, could take like 45min-1hr for a full calibration, and if you just show up and suprise them - that may not be a welcome suprise and will cut into your time perhaps unexpectedly.

alternately, it could be a non-issue.

i've done a bunch of stuff on used tape. mostly fine, but certainly have had problems. it is however, much more affordable - and a gamble i've taken enough times.

when i record people at my house that are on the super cheap, i also offer the 'record on my reel, then we'll dump to the computer for "archive"' thing as well. if the band brought thier own used tape i'd like to have it before the session start just so i could throw it up on my machine and make sure it's kosher and do any recalibration the night before the session. you can't really tell if it's going to be a problem or not until you have it up on the machine it's going to be on. it can look fine sitting in the box, but have splices or stretches in it that an ebayer or uneducated person simply wouldn't know about (like it it's some band selling their old reel). but we've also seen problems w/ relatively recent new RMGI tape, so not even having brand new tape is a 100% guarantee.

even if you do get your own it's important to make sure you're getting the right formula your engineer wants to work with. the advantage to the engineers tape is you know there will be no problems. the advantage to your friends used tape is you may end up owning it, but you are exposing yourself to more risk and perhaps more work for the engineer which may or may not be cool with them.

again, talk to the person running your session and ask their thoughts.

Fattenings wrote:If there is a thread that already covers some or all of this, direction to it would be most appreciated.

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... 434/0/0/0/