A New Reel to Reel Tape Deck?
Normansizemore - I haven’t had a problem with any reel to reel machine I’ve ever owned. I play them regularly and all of them are over 35 years of age. NSM - I wish you continued good success with them. One day my Studer powered up fine but when I loaded up a tape tails out, right side, threaded it up and hit rewind, nothing except.... a sinking feeling... I called Roger Ginsley my tech. Here is a shot of him I found on the internet http://www.modularmusic.ca/pictures/side_ads_VM125W818p.jpg and here is a web gallery of pics . Some of the pics give a good indicator of what can be involved with servicing these machines if anyone here DIY feels he can tackle them. http://www.tekxelectronics.com/webgallery/webgallery.html anyway Over the phone he said it was a high probability of the power supply capacitors. Huge coke bottle size buggers. He had new capacitors in stock we arranged for a visit. I went to see him this time. After diagnostics he found the original West Germany made capacitors in the machine showing full voltage ! No leakage, or bulging. Still looked new he said. How is this possible? Now he needed to start probing. After X hours he found a bad resistor if I remember. Well personally, I would have felt much better leaving there, if I had paid for X hours labor and brand new capacitors. Larryi - I read not too long ago about a discussion among current recording engineers. They were remarkably consistent in their agreement about the merits of various forms of recording. They all agreed that high resolution digital is closest to sounding like the microphone feed, but, they also agreed that analogue tape actually sounded the best, even though it was not the most accurate. Larryi - Yes, I have heard this too from talking with a few engineers and also from Roger who as worked with so many recording engineers. And digital music sourced from Analog tape can be great. The CD available from that site I linked sounds really really good. french_fries french_fries but the current cost for two blank tape reels needed for one 40 min 15 IPS album is $100. that cost would need to come down. |
Hello, i would just like to add that IMO there is nothing wrong with producing tapes that run at 7.5 IPS, and possibly even 1/4 track as opposed to half-track (i have both). Now we're talking about ONE reel of tape, and it could in some cases even be a plastic 7 inch reel, instead of two 10 inch metal reels, and (also IMO) a slipcase (really just a cardboard box (deluxe packaging?). I have two Tape Project tapes, and they sound very good, but the metal reels are out-of-round, the tape on the boxes was peeling off all over the place (i spent quite a bit of time repairing them), and the Sonny Rollins tape has 4 songs per reel- no sooner do you sit down when it's time to get up again, rewind reel #2, and listen to that one for another 15 minutes. Luckily i bought these used, and i would like to buy more of them, especially the Linda Rondstat, But at $450 plus shipping i can suffer the 8-9 quality of the sound from the redbook CD. |
french_fries, I agree! I see no reason why they can't spool up a 3600' of good back coated tape. If they did, it would take ONE reel at 15ips to get 45 min of music. I tape full LP's all the time on ONE reel in 1/2 track format. Using such a heavy mil and short spool of tape is silly and expensive. I used to have several 1/4 track tapes that sounded excellent. There is a difference in sound between 1/4 track and 1/2 track, but in some instances it is soooo very close. N. |
I hear all this, but as an archiving media, hasn't vinyl well outlasted tape? I have original late 60's early 70's vinyl that is still sounding good. Would a R2R tape have lasted that long without severe degradation? And I'm not talking about temperature controlled vault storage, but you average house/garage storage? I am sorry to say, but I don't think there will ever be much of a market for tape. Vinyl is a PITA to listen to, tape is 2X the PITA. I had a Tanberg R2R back in the day (not those nice servo controlled ones, but the manual mechanical joystick) and I don't really miss it. I am finding digital is not all that bad if recorded and played back through class A analog circuitry with no IC opamps. I'm afraid anything produced today by Studer or Revox or Tascam will be chuck full of IC opamps, like most prosumer gear, and will sound like crap, even at 15 ips. |
