I plodded through Practical Audio Electronics by Kevin Robinson, hoping that it would be a good introduction to the subject. I made it through its 416 pages finding a lot of good reference material, but it just wasn’t organized in a way that made any sense to me, and therefore, to a reader who wanted to get a good understanding of signal flow, how circuit components interact, and how to go from concept to design or to learn what one needs to know to troubleshoot and repair an electronic audio device. You’ll find the review here should you want the gory details, but the short review is that I wouldn’t recommend this book other than as a shelf reference.
At the request of a long time AES colleague, I’ve posted what now should be considered a historic article about tape baking. Based on a paper published by Ampex, it describes the procedure, using common household materials, for (most of the time) restoring an unplayable tape with a surface that’s become sticky to playability. We know a lot more about the problem, why it occurs, and alternate ways of rescuing a pesky tape than we did back then and there’s a bit of incorrect information in this article based on what we thought then, but know better now. Check out the article here, and if you have a sticky tape to play, give it a try.
Mike Rivers - Useful Audio Stuff 