Serving Te Awamutu
Tape, Film & Slide Digitising for Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu is our closest neighbour — just 20 minutes across the river. Your family's tapes, reels and slides are digitised personally, right here in Cambridge.
Farm sheds and hall cupboards around Te Awamutu, Kihikihi and Pirongia are full of family history — Super 8 reels of haymaking summers, VHS tapes of school productions and 21sts, slide carousels from trips long past. The trouble is the Waikato damp gets into all of it, and every year a little more fades away.
Rather than posting your only copies to a lab in Auckland, you can bring them 20 minutes up the road to a purpose-built studio in Cambridge. Sound Lounge is run by Dane Clarke — a broadcast professional with over 30 years in television, from the BBC in London to live sport across Australasia — and every transfer is done by him personally, in-house.
You'll get an honest, no-obligation assessment first, and when the work's done your files come back on USB, DVD or a free online download, along with every single original.
Easy from Te Awamutu
1. Tell us what you have
A rough count is fine — "a shoebox of tapes and two biscuit tins of slides" is all we need for an honest quote.
2. Bring it over
The studio is 20 minutes from Te Awamutu — most people drop their box in on a Cambridge run. If we're ever out your way we can sometimes collect, so feel free to ask.
3. Watch them again
Collect your USB or get a free download link — and have a night on the couch with the whole family watching.
What we can rescue
A word about shed-stored tapes
Tapes and film stored in sheds, garages and baches cop the worst of the humidity — mould and "sticky-shed" are common around the Waipā. Don't force a musty tape through a VCR; bring it in as it is. Recovery is very often possible, and the assessment costs nothing.
Delivery options
Google Drive download — Free
USB stick (32GB) — From $30
DVD — $15