Quantegy Inc. was a manufacturer of
magnetic tape and professional
external hard drives based in
Opelika, Alabama
Opelika (pronounced ) is a city in and the county seat of Lee County in the east-central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. As of the 2020 census, the population of Opelika is ...
. Their tape products were primarily used in analog audio and video recording studios, but they also have some use with digital
data storage devices and instrumentation recorders along with some audiophile home hobbyists.
The company was created at the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
by Major
John Herbert Orr as Orradio Industries. This was a result of the US Army requiring an American supplier of magnetic tape. Magnetic tape was a German invention and after the war, the German manufacturing ability was destroyed.
* In 1959,
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...
acquired Orradio Industries and it became the Ampex Magnetic Tape Division.
* In 1995, Ampex divested this division, then called the Ampex Recording Media Corporation. At the same time, 3M was also spinning off its magnetic media division. Equitable Life Insurance acquired these combined entitie
which became Quantegy Inc., and later changed its name to the current Quantegy Recording Solutions, with the Ampex product line being the nominal survivor, although much use of the 3M technologies later found their way into Quantegy products including the high end GP9 tape.
* In January 2005, having previously filed for bankruptcy protection, Quantegy closed its manufacturing facility in Opelika. This event received substantial media attention.
* On April 18, 2005, Quantegy resumed operations under new ownershi
* In January 2007, Quantegy announced that it will cease production of magnetic tape in April 2007 and is taking orders up until February 22
The only remaining manufacturers of new magnetic tape for sound recording are
RMGI and
ATR Magnetics.
* In April 2007,
Reel Deal Pro Audio purchased the majority of Quantegy's reel to reel audio tape and accessories and began to sell it on their web site
* In June 2007, Quantegy ceased sales of the FHD and Black Diamond FHD3 series of
hard drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...
products to the professional audio recording industry.
, Quantegy was working on reviving Quantegy 456 Studio Mastering Tape, Quantegy 499 Gold Studio Mastering Tape, GP9 Platinum Studio Mastering Tape, as well as the Black Diamond Series of products. But {{As of, 2012, lc=on, no progress had been made. Most of the tape production facilities, located in Opelika, Alabama, were sold in 2008 and few years later demolished.
See also
*
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is Magnetic tape#Audio, magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') contain ...
*
Audio tape length and thickness
*
Magnetic tape sound recording
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
*
Videotape
Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocasse ...
External links
Corporate Homepage- From Internet Archive (Warning: mostly FLASH)
Quantegy History PageNPR story on 2005 plant closing/bankruptcyRolling Stone story on 2005 plant closing/bankruptcyMore info on new ownership* An ol
advertisementfor Irish brand ferro-sheen tape.
Reel Deal Offers Last Quantegy Tapes
Video storage
Audio storage