On Sat, 15 Feb 2025, Jon Elson wrote:
Anyway, I got pretty frustrated, and eventually pulled the cover off the drum and discovered there were two tracks totally scored down to the brass, and a couple more that were a bit scored. The cover on the drum was just deep drawn aluminum with caterpillar grommets around the cable entries. NOWHERE NEAR a hermetic seal!
Magnetic drums usually have a couple of spare tracks exactly for this reason. You can move a head to a different unused track in case that one track has gone bad. The LGP-30 for example has around 4-5 spare tracks IIRC. And no, it isn't hermetically sealed, either ;-)
Christian
