Sound Striping in the USA

[Adam Deierling]

Does anyone in the USA do super 8 sound striping?

[Burton Sundquist]

Not to my knowledge. Service is provided in Italy though, by Alberto Vangelisti. His magnetic tracks bring super 8 sound into the 2020's

[Osi Osgood]

The film lab in Germany has its own striping as well, but from what I understand, they can only do mono striping, which is OK by me. I haven't heard of any companies that provide striping in the USA, but if folks have they're own striping machines, they couldn't certainly clean up on the business, as, coming up with the stripe would've easy enough. Coming up with the right glue might be a little more tough, but it could certainly be done.

[Adam Deierling]

I am currently doing all the sound recordings for Dave Baker and Steve Osborne (Basically all the new releases). I can tell you that, although Alberto's striping is ok to mediocre quality) Alberto's business practices are fraudulent and borderline extortion. I wont get into details here.

The striping that Andec does (Through a third party) is excellent in its sound quality but is not without issues as well, causing scratches to brand new prints. The magnetic material used can flake off. My machine has a large amount of magnetic dust that needs cleaned out after every reel I record. They say they are working on the issue so I am hopeful it can be resolved.

Dave, Steve, and I all want you to know that we are aware of the issues and are working with the lab to make things right. We don't want to release subpar prints. We are now doubling our quality control efforts to ensure prints received are as described.

This is why I am asking if anyone in the states can do this (or has equipment they could sell me and I will do it!). It's getting too expensive and damaging too many prints, currently. If we want new prints to continue and keep this hobby alive we must find another solution. Or hope that the two companies offering it clean up their act.

I know I only have one release so far (Home Alone) but if this keeps up, I wont release anymore. I wont loose money because of other's mistakes.

[Lee Mannering]

Its worth asking as well particularly if its in your own country and the competition is reelly good for business. I'm guessing they may be servicing the machine which would be logical, nay sensible you can only guess. Hopefully soon as I have orders pending as well.
Due to the cyber hit to Royal Mail I'm presently unable to ship International so thank you for your patience International collectors, another reason to have these technical services in your own country perhaps.

[Larry Arpin]

It's too bad Ludwig can't just glued the stripe before it is proscessed as it will stick to the black backing to the estar base. I believe this is how Kodak did it. If you have an old pre-striped film you will see on the emulsion side black where the stripes are.

[Burton Sundquist]

...I would like to reply to an UNTRUE and DEFAMITORY post in this thread, which quite Frankly should have been removed by the moderators. Dual Magnetic striping provided by Moviemagnetic are NOT Mediocre, contrary to the opinion expressed by the poster. They are in fact capable of recording a dynamic range and quality equal or superior to pre-striped Eastman prints. I have both recorded on them myself and had recording done by Moviemagnetic, both with amazing results. Calling this service Mediocre is an opinion of one who hasn't had the experience of listening to an actual finished product, or has an axe to grind.

[Burton Sundquist]

...As far as business practices are concerned, all good in my several dealings. Any accusations of FRAUD or EXTORTION: be prepared to back them up. Do you really want to go there?
REALLY?

[Joerg Polzfusz]

I guess the main problem with rating the quality is that nobody has a new or at least a recently CLA'ed projector. 95% of our projectors are at least 40 years old. Just take a look at the amount of articles regarding humming and hissing projectors here on the forum. Then search for "de-magnetizing soundheads" or blown fuses/capacitors/tubes/… . And you will also probably also find threads about soundheads that aren’t in the correct position anymore, but have been moved by a few millimeters in the last decades (loose screws, …). And when reading some old magazines from the 1970s, you will also find articles about then new projectors where the tester complained about the device’s poor sound.
In other words: There are so many things that can go wrong while testing that it’s hard to properly rate the tests. I don’t question the testers' results and efforts. But we’ll have to remind ourselves to put these results into context: Is it really the striping that isn’t perfect? Or is it the projector (individual device, general flaws of the model or even the brand)? Or could even be the source of the sound the cause of the problems - or something with the cables between source and projector?


As for DIY striping: Remember that this depends on the type of film. The majority of devices will only work on acetate based filmstocks while e.g. Andec's prints are on polyester based filmstocks.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Warning! The following text is only a strange theory without any proof! Warning!

Do you also remember those switches on your tape recorder and your recorder not supporting all types/formulations? There’s the slight chance that Movie Magnetic is using a slightly different formula for its liquid soundtrack that is causing problems on certain soundheads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compac...d_formulations

[Mike Newell]

Sound and striping has always been the Achilles heel of Super 8. You could never really match the quality sound of bigger gauges. Yes you could turn the volume up. Watching digital you realise how much dialogue you were missing. I wasn’t actually deaf after all. Going back to Super 8 remember the old Mountain and Powell prints and others that had bits of stripe sticking out of the reels that you could cut with scissors even new. Sometimes it belonged to the movie but usually it was just extra. Also, when you cleaned older releases with 2.22 or Thermofilm you could get more than you bargained for on a white cloth 😳. Moving forward after the professional pre striping stopped and Derann started their own diy striping grey and lumpy if you remember you could never really depend on how long it would stay on. I remember a collector friend who was a projectionist saying way back the Jurassic Park era that he would never buy a new feature from them that had been diy striped. Thank God for white box specials because I know there are complete batches 30 of Terminator and Aliens out there that were faulty but sold at discount prices via conventions and sales lists. There was a reason. Why certain Disney were £50 not just Mermaids I eventually got a decent Terminator print twisting Mike Dimmock arm and bought an. older Aliens release which I still had to have re recorded by Ian.

Anyway pay your money take your chance as the saying goes. Least they won’t go pink.

[Ken Finch]

Back in the days when all film was acetate there were two methods of adding magnetic stripe to film, “paste” or “ laminate”. I tried the latter using A Supersound Striper without much success. The adhesive did not bond very well and the stripe came off. I then managed to get it all off, cleaned the film with Thermofilm and sent it off to be striped using the paste stripe method and it is still good to this day. I can imagine adding magnetic stripe to modern film stocks must be a nightmare, and the only real answer is to use film which has the magnetic stripe applied as part of the manufacturing process as was done with audio and video tapes with when they changed to “plastic” base. My apologies if I am “teaching my grandma to suck eggs”. Ken Finch.☺️

[Osi Osgood]

Though I did appreciate Alberto's color restoration of Grizzly Adams, and it was quite good, not back to new, but pretty close, but he insisted on this optical print being striped after the color treatment. I repeatedly asked as to why it was absolutely necessary to mag stripe the print, but he never answered this question, but insisted that this extra step was crucial, so, being that I really wanted this film treated, I reluctantly went along with it. When I received the print back, I found that the mag stripe was already, immediately flaking off. Burton, I know you wish to defend him, and I appreciate that, and his color treatment program is fine, but I have to, with all honesty, state that mag striping didn't work well and has made a print that is no longer optical sound, nor is it very good for magnetic recordings. This is just my own experience, and is no doubt not everybody's.

[Mike Newell]

I arranged to get Little Shop of Horrors which was an optical print striped and recorded. It seemed to hold the strip okay but I treated it with kids gloves and never treated it with any Film cleaners.

[Brian Fretwell]

I think that Ged from Derann would tell you many horror stories about striping Super 8 and the problems that changes in formulations in the liquid stripe would produce, as well was the binder need to make it stick.