Users of Studer’s A807 Mk1, A807 Mk2 and A810 analogue tape decks can breathe more easily with the announcement that NOA Audio Solutions has secured a large stock of quarter-inch tape heads.
Acting on behalf of the archiving community, NOA has negotiated a manufacturing run of butterfly and 2mm heads in VitroVac anamorphic glass – a higher performance alternative to the standard MuMetal head. VitroVac provides two to three times the duration, allowing archive operators to extend machine life and increase the quantity of material they can archive.
The heads are part of a last manufacturing run from AM Belgium before production ends, and are available to NOA customers operating sound archives using these machines. They cost around half the price that individual customers would expect pay for orders placed directly with suppliers.
‘Due to the size of the order required to initiate a manufacturing run, small archiving operations around the world have had difficulty obtaining new heads –until now,’ says NOA Audio Solutions CEO, Christophe Kummer. ‘NOA has provided a valuable service to our customers by ensuring a good supply of heads as production comes to an end, and as an extra bonus, we have managed to get them in the more durable VitroVac material, which has always been a premium option in the past.
‘We have done this essentially on an altruistic basis, and the fact that around 400 heads have been ordered so far is an interesting indication of the value vested in tape-based audio material which is yet to be transferred,’ he adds.
More: www.noa-audio.com
