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This question is for Greg or anyone else at Electrical that the question applies...

Recently a band called United Snakes recorded at my studio in Minneapolis and they brought in a 2" tape to record over that you [Greg] used at Electrical. My 2nd Engineer and myself looked at the Cal level and we were curious what you had it set at. If my memory serves me correctly (and it doesn't right now) it wasn't 320nWb or so on but we concluded it might have been +12. I don't recall the nWb written down on the tape cuz this forum wasn't around 3 months ago and I thought I would have no reason to bring it up with "notes-in-hand".

Okay, my question, is there an advantage to setting levels at +12 (if that's what is was) as opposed to +9, +6, and so on for a 2" machine? Is it specific to the machines Electrical has? Are they modified or is it something that you [Greg] prefer and/or are accustom to?

Thanks for your time,
--Adam Lazlo

That tape was recorded at 500 nWb/m (+9dB over 185nWb/m). 500nWb/m is the high level standard we set here for our multitracks.
There isn't any mods for the machines for this.
I did try recording drums at +15 once with Ampex/Quantegy 456, and it didn't sound cool.
What sounded great was under-biasing the tape and hitting it that hard. The distortion was waterfall like, and made you sick after a while.
That was nice.