Now what can I say about open reel. Well, the format has been around forever (almost) and is still in use in different forms today. Of course, to stick with the theme of vintage audio, I'm going to stick to 50's and 60's vintage reels and the machines made durring the tube era. I'm sure there are much better sources for tape history out there, so this is my condenced "off the top of my head" version, which is hopefully accurate. Wire recorders and tapes recorders were around in many forms but didn't really mature into a high fidelity form of recording sound, at least in the United States, until the late 40s after WWII. Tape can be divided into track, where basicly the tape is divided into seperate strips of recorded material, allowing tapes to have more than one channel or side. I believe some earily machines use only one track, making a tape that could only be played on one side, but to the best of my knowledge most earily consumer tape recorders were half track, in other words, only half of the tape's width was used for each track. As the machines were mono, half of the tape would be used recording one side, then the tape could be turned over to use the other half. In the 50s, stereo started to catch on, and stereo tape recorders were produced. Unlike newer machines, though, they were still half track, using one half of the tape for one channel, and one half for the other, allowing use of only one side of the tape. I believe I read that RCA released the first pre-recorded stereo tape in 1954. Of course, there wasn't much to record in stereo other than live recordings, so many machines were simply a mono machine with an extra pre-amp out for the other channel. Also, I ended up with a "stereo upgrade" kit for an open reel recorder, to my surprise this adds a second head, and the note on the very end of the instructions says to make sure that you use staggered tape, not stacked! What does this mean? The left and right channel information are a few seconds apart on the tape, and the heads are playing tape that's an inch or two apart with respect to each other. Aparently there were tapes in the works just for this type of setup, or it never took off leaving the upgrade fairly useless. Only a few years later, quarter track tape recorders became available. These decks use only 1/4 of the tape for each track, so now stereo tapes could be double sided. I am not able to find any information as to when these tape recorders were first available, but my guess would be the late 50s some time, as half track stereo consumer tapes/recorders aren't very common.
Where can you buy new tape? Try National Audio Company
Coming soon: I'm in the process of getting some state surplus open reel recorders that look to have been used for dictation. They use some unique DIN connectors for input, output, and controlls, and have slower tape speeds than most common recorders, so hopefully I can add some more info once I get a little further in the project. I might even have an extra for sale if someone asked nice, they look ideal for long continous recordings.