Reel-2-reel

Anyone know a decent use for one of these? Beyond posing wit me analogue, cutting my fingers with splicing knives, and generally wasting hours doing stuff that could be done digitally in seconds?

I only ask coz I just found one in the attic. It's beaten to fuck, but seems to be in perfect working order. I recorded an accordion solo and played it backwards speeded up. Yup, seems to be working.

a) tape echo

b) recording stuff at high speed and then playing them back low speed. like pads and strings and stuff.

c) recording stuff and damaging the tape and then playing it back.

d)...

e)..

f).

what is it?

make/model?

reel to reel is good for a final compression, but you won't get a decent tape compression out of 1/8 tape.

you can use 1/8th for damaging a mix, distorting it, fucking with the tuning as it plays, deliberate dropouts, styretching, and a number of unsophisticated compression/distortion techniques.

try recording, then spraying hairspray on the tape, burying it in your garden for a week, heating it on a radiator, stretching parts of it, being sick on it, carrying it around in your pockets, randomly splicing it, playing it backwards, overloading it etc etc.

what do you want to know?

That, pretty much, is the type of shit I want to know... decent techniques for fucking around with the sound of recordings, advantages/disadvantages of dumping down to tape rather than MD, etc etc...

I'm really keen to get my hands dirty and destroy some stuff, but I'm a wee bit wary when it comes to reel tapes- I only have two spools and I gather this stuff is well hard to come by nowadays. Basically any info, experience or links to articles would be appreciated- I never read up or planned for this, it was a totally random discovery

EDIT: It's a Defiant T-15, if that means anything to anyone... I doubt it'll be anything special as really cool stuff doesn't just show up in your attic (long years of waiting tells me this)

i meant 1/4"... sorry was quite drunk when i wrote that.

for mixdown, you really want two track 1/2" at least, but you can do all those other things on a 1/4" four track tape.

i have used a 1/4" machine for a master once or twice, with mixed results.

and you can get 1/4" tape from most decent studio suppliers... it's quite expensive, but it's avbailable.

do a google for 'studiospares', if you live in the uk.

oh yeah, and you don't want to master to md either... it has it's own special weird compression that can fuck a final mix.