Hugh Robjohns wrote: ↑Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:05 pmTim Gillett wrote: ↑Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:48 am
Interestingly on the AES list of 3M tapes manufactured, I couldnt find 256 mentioned at all.
Comes across more as accusative and disparaging than interesting...
However, I can easily prove both James and Kwackman absolutely correct.
3M type-256 wasn't made -- or, AFAIK, made available -- in America and so, probably not surprisingly, it doesn't appear to exist in the American listings.
However, there was a 3M tape factory just north of Swansea in South Wales in a place called Gorseinon that made recording tape for the BBC, amongst others. As it happens, I actually visited that factory in 1981 while at university as Chief Engineer of the university radio station, in a successful attempt to blag a couple of cartons of recording tape for our four studio Revox A77s! I'm afraid I cant remember the tape type I acquired, but it was in orange boxes.
I'll second that.
256 was indeed made at the 3M plant in Gorseinon, for the european market.
As a child I lived about 7 miles from the 3M plant (my secondary school was about 2 miles away from it) and several of my extended family worked there. When it opened it was the first 3M factory outside the USA. For many years, it made 3M tape products (recording and adhesive) for Europe, including many of the Scotch brand open reel, audio cassettes, video cassettes and sticky tapes (the intentionally sticky kind, not audio tapes that went sticky - though they made those too!). Production of open reel audio tape finished in the late 1990s, not sure about the others, and the plant is now a smaller facility than in it's heyday and produces medical/personal care and automotive products.
With family members working there, I got to do the factory tour several times, and to attend various staff family days which were usually fun. When I got into recording, I ended up with rather a lot of ...er... cosmetic seconds of Scotch tapes, often just boxes of pancakes in plastic bags or in white boxes with stickers to identify the tape type. It included a lot of 256. I don't know whether 256 was specifically for the BBC, I think it was a low print mastering tape for the European market. I know it came in the "serious" brown/rust colcoured boxes and a more snazzy light grey, navy blue and white box with labelling in more than one language - maybe English, French, Italian and.....not sure...Spanish maybe, or German. There was also a lot of 262 which was sometimes in brown/rust coloured boxes stickered "Specially made for the BBC", or occasionally in a mid blue 'Tartan" box which had the BBC line printed on the box rather than stickered (but mostly I got it in white boxes or as pancakes with "262R" stickers (Which I think indicated Rejected for various reasons)).
By a strange coincidence, after not really thinking often about the Gorseinon factory for years, about a week ago I spoke to someone in Gorseinon about something completely unrelated (trying to find out about the history of the Welsh delicacy known as the corned beef rissole! If anyone knows anything about them please PM me!), who told me that, earlier this month, 3M announced that they were starting a 45-day "consultation process" with the remaining 100 or so employees there regarding closure of the plant, with the work transferring to Ireland.
The AES list of Scotch brand recording tape is by no means exhaustive, even for US sourced tapes. A quick look at my own notes (also incomplete) shows:
109/109A Instrumentation tapes
111 A-P as a plastic base version of the 111/111A Acetate base tape,
141 A a silicone lubricated 1.5mil Acetate based version of 141
204 Polyester back double play
212 1mil Polyester Long Play "Dynarange"
213 Double play version of 212
214 0.5mil Triple play version of 212
215 1mil Polyester Long Play "Superlife" (Italian manufacture)
218 High Output
220 Polyester Double Play
223 Long Play
224 Double Play
228 1.5mil Polyester "Highlander" (Economy range)
229 1mil Polyester Long Play "Highlander"
256 1.3mil Polyester Back coated, High Output, Low Noise, Low Print
262 BBC Special
282 1.5mil Polyester
479 Video
801 Instrumentation Tape
AV177 1.0mil "Tenzar" High Strength Polyester Long Play.
The above are a mixture of US manufacture and European manufacture from 3M Welsh and Italian plants. I probably have more detail on them but I'd have to look for it. And I know there are others also not on the US list.
Yes, I do keep notes on the most incredibly boring things! At least that way I don't have to remember any of it!