Legal notice

Capstan is a reference journal, not a shop or a workshop. The notes below cover who is responsible for it and what that means for the way you use it.

Who is behind Capstan

Publisher: Capstan. The journal is produced by its own editorial team, and its guides carry the journal's name rather than a personal byline.

Where it is hosted

Capstan is delivered through Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.

About the advice

Guidance on playing old tape, cleaning heads, retiring a DAT machine or testing a valve amplifier is based on archival guidelines (IASA, the Library of Congress, the U.S. National Archives), manufacturers' documentation and established technical literature, which every guide lists. Old media is fragile, though, and a tape played once on a badly adjusted deck may not survive a second pass. If a recording is irreplaceable, a professional transfer is worth considering before experimenting.

Several guides describe work near mains wiring or the high voltages found in valve equipment and power supplies. They are written for understanding, not as authorisation to work on live circuits; if you are not trained, hand the job to a qualified technician. Capstan cannot be held responsible for damage to equipment, recordings or people resulting from repairs attempted on the basis of its articles.

Copyright and trademarks

The articles are Capstan's own work and should not be copied in full elsewhere without permission. The photographs are by other photographers, used under free licences or from the public domain; they are listed with their licences on the photo credits page. Brand and model names (Revox, Sony, Nakamichi and many others) identify equipment and remain the property of their owners. No manufacturer or dealer pays for, sponsors or approves anything published here.

Privacy

There is nothing to sign up for. The site sets no cookies, uses no visitor statistics or advertising networks, and serves its fonts locally. Cloudflare, as the hosting and delivery provider, processes the technical data any web request involves, such as IP addresses, and keeps short-lived logs for security.

Reaching the publisher

Corrections, copyright concerns and removal requests are handled by the editorial team of Capstan.

More about the journal, its three “sides” and the business that once used this address is on the About Capstan page.