RECALIBRATION: MAGNETIC REFERENCE LAB ANNOUNCES IMPENDING SHUTDOWN
Tom Fine
Everyone who buys anything made from magnetic tapes, be it all-analog LPs, reissues of recordings made prior to relatively recent history, or digital transfers from analog tapes, should worry when the main maker of playback-calibration standards for all tape machines closes its doors. Without standardized calibration tapes, which were used to align the machines on which master tapes were recorded, it isn’t possible to get accurate playback, whether it’s to a lacquer disc or a digital file. What’s more, technicians who restore and repair tape machines use calibration tapes in the machine’s final setup to adjust playbackhead azimuth and fine-tune it to correctly track the desired equalization curve.1
At the beginning of October, this text appeared at the website of Magnetic Reference Lab (MRL), the last widely accepted professional manufacturer of calibration tapes: “After nearly 50 years in business, we are sad to announce MRL will be closing at the end of this year (2023). Over the past decade, we have done our best to continue supplying a quality product, but time has finally caught up with our personnel and equipment.”
The “personnel” at MRL is Chuck Booye, who has run it as a one-man shop for the past 15 years. His stepfather, Tony Bardakos, cofounded MRL in 1972 with Ed Seaman and John G. “Jay” McKnight. All were former Ampex employees. McKnight, who became CEO in 1975, died in 2022. According to Booye, McKnight’s heirs own the company and support his decision to close.2
The bottom line, Booye said, is that the equipment is old and worn out. His service technician retired earlier this year. “Every day, my fingers are crossed,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen until I turn a machine on. I have no idea what’s going to go wrong and when it’s going to go wrong.” On the plus side, he said, he’s had so many malfunctions and breakdowns by now he knows how to troubleshoot quickly.
