Behind the Scenes: How Do We Keep It All Running?

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Preserving audio means maintaining both tapes and the rare equipment needed to play them. Our team repairs vintage machines and secures parts to keep historic recordings accessible, ensuring artists can bring their work to life for years to come.

Matt Steck

Audio Engineer, Iron Mountain Media & Archive Services

September 23, 20247 mins

When one thinks of audio preservation, the mind usually drums up the visual of shelves upon shelves of audio tapes locked away in a vault. While the material is certainly the largest part of what we do, the second most important part is the equipment to play it back, and equally, those who know how to play it back. Something that often isn’t immediately considered is how we keep this equipment running, both now and into the future. Many of the repair and service resources that were once plentiful in the professional audio realm have dwindled over time. Just as one would be hard-pressed to find a television repairman in 2024, finding technicians specializing in even the more common analog studio tape machines is often a challenge, not to mention someone that specializes in more of the esoteric, short-lived digital tape machines of the past.

I try to dedicate my rare downtime to repairing and maintaining our in-house equipment. When I’m not in the studio digitizing assets, you’ll find me in our tech shop working to maintain the nearly 50-year-old equipment we use daily. To say it’s a passion would be an understatement: when I’m “off the clock,” you’ll find me at my home workbench, restoring my own fleet of tape decks, CRT televisions, and VCRs.

I have a long history and personal interest in vintage audio and video electronics, as do many involved in the field of preservation. But if I can’t figure out how to fix something, I’ll escalate the problem to one of our full-time, off-site technicians. Very often, we rely on small vendors. These folks are virtuosos at their craft and as time progresses and they retire, there is no one to fill the void. These vendors provide critical services such as audio tape manufacturing, tape head repair/restoration, calibration tape manufacturing, and re-rubbering services for pinch and drive rollers. They provide an invaluable resource for our industry and are rapidly disappearing.

At our Boyers facility, we can typically transfer over 30 professional audio formats at the drop of a hat. If the format isn’t common, our team can likely find a solution. We regularly handle legacy pro digital formats such as 3324/3348, X-850, and 1630 U-Matic. In the 1980s and 1990s, as recording progressed into the computer-centric technology it is today, much of this hardware was disposed of with nary a second thought.

But now, with the interest in new surround technologies and immersive audio, artists wanting to revitalize their catalog and take advantage of these new techniques may need to access an original multitrack from 1985. If those tapes were recorded on the Mitsubishi X-850, they might be in for an uphill battle. I’m proud to say this isn’t the case here at Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services: we keep as many X-850s up and running as we can with parts to spare.

There is always maintenance with these older machines. All of them were sold new with manufacturer-recommended maintenance intervals to be performed by a full-time studio technician. While studio technicians are in short supply, part inventories have also mostly dried up. This has forced us, and many others, to get creative at times. For example, we have hand-turned fresh rubber rollers and even molded and cast intricate plastic parts that may not yet be 3D-printable, among other creative tactics. Our team is regularly scouring eBay and Craigslist for spare machines and parts and we maintain an inventory of original factory service literature.

We’re always happy to chat with veterans of the industry to acquire as much wisdom as we can. Myself and others do our best to build and maintain personal relationships with past and current techs and vendors. You never know when a seemingly trivial piece of information will save the day.

So as time ticks on, rubber drive belts and rollers will turn into a tar-like goo. Belts will stretch and slip. EPROMs will become corrupted. Heads will slowly but surely wear down. Electronic components will degrade with age and fail. All the while you can be sure that one of us at Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services will be doing our best to find a solution. Keeping this equipment is not just a passion project for us, it’s a critical component of the work we do to ensure our team preserves our customers’ assets.