Open Reel Curious

A few years back l bought an Akai GX-220D three motor, 4 track three head auto-reverse on impulse from eBay £79

Recapped and with no additional maintenance needed it is now in good shape. Bought 12 new and some used Agfa 7” tapes from one guy for £30 + P&P again from eBay. Soon up and running for £200 all in. I was so impressed (only had a Grundig mono R to R in my teens) I spent a little more on about 10 pre-recorded 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 ips tapes for good measure.

l can’t put my finger on it but 7 1/2 ips (no Dolby) there’s just something about that sound. Yes it’s of novelty value, l do not play around with it often, but it adds some razzamataz to the music.

For sure; reel to reel is something us baby boomers sort of got sucked into; high end on tape formats that were better than 8 track or cassette.  So as a young 20 something i bought a Pioneer RT909; it was cool; ok; and groovy....got rid of it to someone who liked it more than me..Bought a nice Teac deck; model excapes me but i just spent a grand on it to recondition it...got it back, plugged it in; and it's sat right there on the audio stand for nine months now...i love having this audio antique there; along with my Marantz 5420 cassette deck....but really, not motivated to record yet....but wow, those two units look cool sitting there; albeit they are both over 40 years old....but, maybe it gets to be fun on rainy days once i retire....who knows..

I have an Otari 5050 mkll for about 40 years now. Before that I had the Pioneer top model in the 70s. Last year I picked up a Pioneer 707 to backup the original 7.5 reels that I have purchased. I have 4 TT, 2 in my main system. A Technics GAE with an Ortho Cadenza Black, & a EMT 948 with the TD-MRB cart on that. Both tables pull all the music out from the groves that have been recorded on them.

Now the original recording from the 60s & 70s on the Reels, sound much better then the original pressing of Lps that I have. One would have to be cautious when buying original tapes because of how they were stored & of the person selling, stating they have no way of testing the tape before hand. e.g. (splices & blank spots)

I have made a couple of visits to United Home Audio UHA), a company that specializes in refurbishing and making their own improved electronics for R2R machines.  The most interesting demonstration involve playing a record on a very high end vinyl set up and comparing the sound to a tape recording of that same vinyl setup playing that record.  The UHA folks think that the R2R copy sounds better than the vinyl original.  I did not agree (the vinyl original sounded a bit more dynamic) but I can see why others might prefer the R2R version which was very open and airy sounding with a pleasant relaxed quality to the sound.  Of course that means the recording altered the sound, but arguably, it improves the sound.  In any case, I enjoyed the R2R sound a lot.  Since that visit UHA has gone much deeper into improving the electronics of refurbished machines; top models approach six figures.

This reminds me of an interview a magazine presented of three recording engineers.  All three agreed that high resolution digital recordings sound much closer to the sound of live microphone feeds than do the analogue R2R recording when doing instantaneous comparisons.  But, all three agreed that they liked the sound of the R2R recording more than the digital version.

My mother bought me a 99 dollar Radio Shack R to R...in the 60s...I loved recording and making tapes.I belonged to Columbua house R to R tape club...I still have them..Don't have the tape deck.I do have 2 teac decks