Reel to Reel: QVC music.

I do keep an eye out for stuff, and this has appeared Lost Master tape from QVC. Would this be the type QVC and others used back in the day to play out music in TV studios? How can one tell if its real?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/QVC-Original-Theme-Tune-Master-Reel-to-Reel-UK-USA/123604129780?hash=item1cc76157f4%3Ag%3AlJAAAOSwhEhcRJuQ%3Ark%3A2%3Apf%3A1&frcectupt=true&fbclid=IwAR0Di3UpshzKGlrkk3DKot-wqF4Yka6NUcJHytZ2TD63PgyN9vYMbSTdeAw

Looks incredibly bulky for what is (looking at the track listing) about four minutes of audio. But what do I know about tape reels?

Realness? Well until you buy it and play it (if you can find a player) you'll never know.

They wouldn't really use it for playback into programmes, the tape will be a master copy, then then would copy the individual cuts onto a more convenient playback method like cart or minidisc or hard drive based system. This is a copy of the master so presumably they ran it off for the UK operation


Been a long time since i used 1/4" tape. Probably about right though. I assume 10M is 10 minutes but I don't know what speed that is and the reel isn't full. It's recorded at 15inches per second. 4 minutes (by my calculation) is 91 metres of tape, plus leader and tones.



EDIT - finally managed to see the track listing in high resolution. Probably 4 minutes of audio in total, but there'll be gaps between each cut. So maybe 7 minutes from start to finish. However there's nothing to scale the size of the reel.

Also I notice it says 'UK Themes Sound 3 Copy'... possibly from sound control room number 3?

You know what, I'm tempted to buy it - but the seller has no feedback at all and says they don't take returns.

Guy should just rip it and sell copies of digital tracks. I'd buy 'em.

The default option for new users is no returns - that's nothing special really.

I found a reel of tape in my attic which looks identical to that. It has a label which says "Property of the BBC" on the box, and judging by the rest of the items with it (old records, cassettes) it dates from the early-mid 80s. Wouldn't know how to start looking for somewhere to play it.

I don't think that's the master tape with the well known 1990s QVC jingle/themes on.

Someone I used to know got a tape, not too dissimilar to that, from QVC UK just before they moved from Marco Polo house and the themes on there were some which were never used.

He digitised the files for me as a WAV and I still have it to this day. The full montage is about 6 minutes long so it looks like it's the same ones.

I'd say buy that reel tape at your own risk. I've tried to source the original well known QVC jingle/theme for nearly 10 years and exhausted all avenues possible. It seems the original recordings/masters are lost.

I knew the unused jingle from a reel to reel tape was doing the rounds somewhere...