Acetate discs in excess of 50 years old begin to gradually dry out and craze.  Layers can fall off of the aluminum  or glass (WWII) base.  We have much experience in aligning and reattaching these sections. 

If shrunken and displaced  in various directions, it is impossible to play the disc in a continuous manor.  The playing stylus will jump back and forth, picking up sound from various grooves, often repeating and skipping.   If the the material is noisy,  that would add to the confusion in editing, ditto  unfamiliar dialogue or complicated music.

If they have not moved, but there only gaps, the prospects are better. Radial cracks are better, cracks in the direction of the grooves are worse.
Even broken discs can be repaired so that they can be played and recorded onto a more stable medium.  Pieces were mended with our proprietary methods.
This broken WWII era glass disc required filling in missing areas along the break and careful alignment of fragments under a microscope.

 

Even wire recordings get special treatment.  At left is our custom machine with solid state, low noise, accurately equalized electronics.  Be aware that wires are often a tangle waiting to happen.  The worst problem is splices.  They are rarely made well and either come apart in the play/rewind or cause a big spill of wire in the process.  Fortunately, this results in little actual sound loss because they run at 24 ips.  So, we record the whole wire in it's entirety.  Then we rewind and pray it does not spill.  We rarely loose the recording, but sometimes there is some loss of wire.
 
Because playing times are often long, and can contain long periods where the recorder was just left on to record the conversation of, say a geriatric or similar, we cannot know what is intentional and will produce  CDs with all of it.  The basic cost to a CD is $60.00.  If there is some complicated editing desired, that is additional.
 
 

For those with needs of vintage sounds we maintain a large archive of vintage and audiophile sounds, including early stereo from the former, Robert Oakes Jordan and Associates.

 

 

 

Old Digital / PCM recordings made on videotape can be transferred using our Sony PCM-F1.

 

We can decode a number of different noise reduction methods, such as DBX I, DBX II, DOLBY B

 

 

  

 

 

 
1/4 inch to 1/2 inch tapes can be transferred from our variety of open reel tape decks, 1 - 8 channels.

 

 

  

 
 

 

 

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