Ever have one of those days when just about everything sucks from sun up to sun down? I had one of ’em about a month ago.

It all began at around 8:00 in the morning, on a day when my adorable little brats were staying overnight at my mother-in-law’s condo. I was reading an e-mail from one of my eBay customers, who purchased and recently received a Frank Sinatra Reprise reel to reel tape of the LP That’s Life. When I listed the auction, I test-played the tape, and it sounded superb. It was purchased in a lot of still-sealed reel to reel tapes. That said, the tape was not to his liking. Take a look at this shit:

When I went to play this tape, I found that it suffers from severe edge curl that results in excessive wow/flutter and dropouts. Even my Teac X-2000, which can compensate for a lot of tape issues, has troubling playing it. I know you played these tapes and found that they played well on your R2R deck, but I experienced some problems playing them on my deck. I notice that the tape suffers from edge curl on one side of the tape and, even though the dual capstan drive mechanism on my deck can compensate for some of that, it could not completely overcome it on the first tape. I can also see that there is visible tape wear on both tapes which may be responsible for the high level of hiss and static noises I hear in the left channel.

Man, did this guy need to get laid.