A strongly recommended technical reading, the book Manual of Analogue Restoration Techniques by Peter Copeland is provided by the British Library as a freely downloadable resource.
Recorders at the British Library
Peter Copeland, after a career at the BBC as a sound engineer since 1961, worked as Conservation Manager at the British Library Sound Archive from 1986 until his retirement in 2002. Peter died in 2006 after a lifetime dedicated to understanding the history and complexity of analogue audio technology.
The British Library makes the book available as a downloadable pdf on their site on this page.
