TDK Tapes??

J

JAGM

Member
Hi,
This is my first posting on this excellent forum. I have noticed much advice on the use of Panasonic tapes and little or no reference to TDK. In Northern Ireland (and the UK in general) TDK has an excellent reputation for quality tapes and in the college where I work (media department) we have four DVX100A for student use. These camcorders are fed a constant diet of TDK. In over one year of steady student use we have yet to have any sort of head / transport problem and the cleaning tapes which came with the cameras have not even been opened. I was wondering if the experts on the forum would like to share their views on the use of TDK? I can easily switch to Panasonic tapes if there would be a distinct advantage (after a head-clean of course).
Regards,
J.M.
 
Others in this forum know much more about tapes than I do, but I keep hearing that one of the most important things is consistency. As long as you stick with the same brand and type, you reduce the chance of mixing different kinds of lubrication in your DV mechanism.

Have you tried searching the forums? The topic of tapes is one that seems to come up often.
 
DONT USE TDK. I used them for almost a year in my DVX, and they suck. I didnt have dropout problems, but they are a wet lube tape, and my heads got Very dirty. Even if you don't have problems using them, they are very poor quality tapes, bad for archiving footage. If you want something reliable, get the MQ tapes. We used TDK in our DVcam decks at school, and it gummed them up so bad that we couldnt even play tapes and get timecode on them. We then had to get them cleaned. Yes, they might be cheap, but why not spend the extra 2.50 on MQ's so that you can have reliable footage....
 
Yes I had a consumer grade TDK tape take out a brand new personal camcorder once. I didn't know any better at the time - I do now.
 
TDK tapes

TDK tapes

Thanks for all your feedback. I have decided to stop using TDK and go with Panasonic Ms. BTW, I didn't realise that TDK were 'wet' - I always assumed that they were 'dry' lubricant like Panasonic!
Regards,
J.M.
 
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