Wow, what a mess! I don't think I have ever had that happen to me.
I was thinking when I saw the photo of that Sony ARP-2003 1/4" half track tape deck, oh, what a great old tape machine! Of course, that was before I read the rest of the story!
Going back about 40 years ago, I designed some floating pumping platforms, essentially dredges, for the 3M Company where they made magnetic recording tape. They had a large lagoon with all this iron oxide sludge in it and they needed to pump it out and clean up the site. That was a mess, too, but the equipment we designed and manufactured for them worked quite well. Then again, I didn't have to do the actual cleanup work on site there.
I love old tape machines and I still have some of mine in my studio, but it has been quite a while since I have used any of them. I did spend a bunch of time about a year ago transferring a bunch of DAT recordings to digital to make sure that I had backup for these recordings.
Sorry about the mess and subsequent cleanup, Bob. Interesting story, though.
- Glenn
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