Reel to Reel

Jay,

last fall Rich Brown had brought the Cello over, Ki wired the switch into the Studer, and we listened. this was with an RCA connection. all was good but the bass impact was missing thru the Cello compared to the stock circuit. also; i desired an XLR connection since my RTR decks are huge and must be on the other side of my room....and i already own an 8 meter set of XLR interconnects.

Charlie made some improvements to the Cello and added an XLR output for me to try. in Feb Rich brought the Cello back. we tried the XLR; for whatever reason with the added transformer for the XLR 'in my particular system' sounded congested and lacking dynamics. we all preferred the stock circuit to the Cello with the XLR. you would have to ask Rich or Charlie why that was. when you are dealing with amplification of tiny head outputs everything matters.

OTOH thru the RCA all was now wonderful. and the lack of bass impact from last fall was gone. it was better everywhere than the stock circuit. my only agenda now is to substitute the darTZeel BNC connection for the RCA and then finding the do-re-me for the purchase.

hopefully that more clearly explains things.

Good stuff, Mike...you're at the vanguard! Ki is alright :-)

Vbr,
Sam

Yes Mike that does clear up my earlier question, thanks. I recently aquired a Tube Repro from Rich, for connection to my Otari. Not sure yet if I want to mod the Studer!!! I still have to listen to the Repro quite a bit to get use to the sound it offers.

JS:

You might want to look into replacing the stock 6DJ8 and EF86s in the Repro. The best I've found are the Tele EF806S and Tele E88CC. They'll give you a cleaner, more transparent sound with more sense of space and attack and a bit better bass. If you want a little warmer, not quite as extended, but with a little more mids, you might want to try an Amperex E188CC/7308 and Mullard 10M ECC88. There are a few other tube combos but despite having the tubes around, haven't tried them yet.

Myles

We've done tape EQ for a few customers, so they could run direct from the head to the preamp. So far it seems as if that works quite well. Its nice if you can get a new tape EQ unit, as often 3-motor transports may not need that much work, but the electronics might, especially if its an older tube unit.

BTW tape heads like cartridges are a balanced source.