How many People own Working Reel to Reel Decks?

Jeff,
I dont go the Tapeproject route, and I have 4 decks, and been into these machines for years. Its easiest to just buy what you like from ebay, or craigslist, etc...Also, if you have a nice turntable, you can make your own tapes, and listen to those. Another thing I had some fun doing was, a few other members in Audio Asylum and myself, each made a full 10 inch new metal reel of tape, with various kinds of music we liked, and mailed them to one-another. This way, each guy got to see how his deck sounded playing tapes well made from the other persons deck, and also got to hear different music than you might hear everyday on your own system. Everyone had a real nice machine, or machines, and we all used virgin tapes, and kept them completely analog, using turntables as our source of music. Some Mobile Fidelity LP's, other imported pressings, etc...we recorded at 7.5 ips, and used 1/4 track decks for the exchange. Ray

Hello,
What is Spotify?? I know Open Reels are great for recording much music on a tape, with great recording quality. Do you mean from Radio? I do that myself here, with use of audio timer, for late night recording on my TEAC X2000R or AKAI GX-747 DBX. Great machines, but my Tandbergs are still my favorites overall. Ray

Yesterday, I heard a highly modded technics 1500 with some of the TapeProject reel tapes (these are dubbed in real time directly from the master tapes). Very, very, impressive sound, but not enough, for me, to justify the expense (~$4000 for the deck and $300/per release of TapeProject issue) and logisitical hassles of going to reel-to-reel playback. YMMV.

Long ago I had several reel to reel machines and even have several live tapings of FSU jazz band recordings. They are a pain in the ass, but are clearly the best sound. I refuse to listen to any tapes now.

Tbg,

good to see you at RMAF, sorry we did not have time for much discussion.

for a guy who pursues the ultimate music reproduction performance without compromise; you have twice in this thread mentioned that RTR is the best sound but also a pain-in-the-ass. did some RTR guy kick sand in your face as a kid, or something?

of course; you have also sworne off vinyl too as being too much trouble.....and accepted the 'dark side' as your exclusive music source.

i'm just 'outing' you as an analog crumodgeon so you don't scare others into thinking RTR is a pain; it's not. mounting a tape is easy and actually less stressfull than cueing an Lp in most ways.

we do agree about the performance; RTR is second to nothing regarding music reproduction.