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I recently obtained three of the MTSL reel to reel albums (two were two reel albums). They were all classical. They were advertised as copies of the master tapes which had been recorded at live concerts (in Australia) in the early 2000's. Sonically they varied from really fine (the second tape of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Requiem is spectacular) to OK. However, all of them had an issue that I have never encountered before. In all three albums, the original tapes used were not long enough to fully record the pieces. So they cut off a few minutes before the pieces ended. In the case of the Webber Requiem it was in the middle of the Pie Jesu the most beautiful part of the Requiem. The other tapes were a Dvorak Piano Trio which stopped somewhere in the 4th movement, and a string quartet 2 reel album, where the second string quartet (the Janacek SQ2) was cut off perhaps half way through the piece. The other two pieces, a Haydn SQ and a Dvorak String Quintet are complete. I contacted MTSL and got an almost immediate reply. Yes the tapes do cut off - they were done live and the concerts were longer than the tapes allowed. However nowhere is this mentioned on their website. Anyway, if you have seen their listing on Myles' list of reel to reel companies, please note that at least for these tapes, you will not be getting complete pieces. They do sell mostly jazz recordings, again live, so there may be the same issues. However, with shorter pieces it may not be such a problem.
Larry
Larry
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