Starting a blog is an interesting challenge for me. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m more comfortable behind the scenes. So why start a blog? For one thing, to get engaged with you, to share the knowledge and passion of my trade. I have been in this business for a long time, but very few people know that I got into it simply because I had so much equipment that I collected over the years, and the only way to keep my wife from throwing it away was to start a business. Twenty-seven years later, I still feel the luckiest person I know. I love what I do, I have no plans to retire, and the best bonus is that at the end of the month I get to bill people for letting me play with my toys. Obviously, there is more to that. I love the work, the challenges that I sometimes get when a shipment arrives and there are tapes there that no one else has been able to play. I love hearing from my clients when they get the files back and get excited about hearing or watching them after so many years. It can be a sermon they heard as kids, or bedtime stories their parents told them, or simply projects that have not been seen since they first aired.
In this field I am considered a youngster, and that is becoming a challenge for our whole industry. A while back we lost Jay McKnight, the guru of calibration tapes and a walking encyclopedia of analog magnetic recording. At the end of 2023 his company MRL will shut down forever, and we will no longer be able to order calibration tapes. Over the years, one by one, the technicians that help me keep my equipment up and running have retired. I still have enough technicians to work with, and I saved enough parts to last me for decades, but this is an issue facing everyone in the archiving community.
In future entries I will talk about different media, odd stories, and great finds that come through the door. Feel free to comment and come back to read more.
Comments