SOTA reel to reel players

Buc,

Ah heck I've got 6 decks and not close to 20K,guess I'm lucky so far, lol.

Not bad considering 30 to 100k turntables and no lights and meters to boot.

One of the last remaining manufactured R2R was the Tascam BR-20. Built like a tank and plenty of parts are still available. They pop up on ebay quite frequently, worth looking out for. A pro deck, but unlike a lot of the otaris/studers etc out there it has unbalanced I/O (as well as balanced). I'm no R2R expert, but the way that deck handles tape with such grace is a joy to behold.

My other deck is a consumer deck (akai gx747 dbx) used to play the few commercial tapes I have.

If you are looking to record vinyl / radio etc the quality of the pro decks out there, along with their increased parts availability is IMHO definately the way to go. Even the best consumer decks lag quite a way behind in many areas, will be hard to find parts for BUT are useful to play commercial titles. thats why I own one of both

Thanks for the responses.
I'm not sure if all the suggestions offered are considered sota in the audio reproduction area.
My main reason for venturing into this area of the hobby is because I heard that reel to reel is better than the best turntables, is this true and which ones will be beat tt by big margins?

Hi Pedrillo, that's a loaded question- the answer is that a table is better if you have direct-to disc. Otherwise, tapes **stomp** on LPs.

IMO, the best tape machines will have an all-tube signal path. You can set up almost any transport to work with tubes, using the signal directly off of the tape heads, although finding the tube preamp is a bit of a trick. The Bottlehead forum is a good source, and we have set up some of our preamps with tape EQ also.

If you want the absolute best analog deck, for my money it's a Studer... if you can't play there, get a well loved Otari with an Atmasphere pre - it will rock

But it's all a question of what your source is

Tape is/was the mastering medium. Nothing like it if you are feeding it straight from the mixing board. Better yet if you are going direct to two track. But take it down a few generations and you slowly begin to build noise of various kinds

That's why if you really want SOTA, the answer the recording industry in many cases will be an entirely digital aignal path until perhaps the final 2 track mixdown. Or a multitraxk record master then all digital until the mixdown.

If you have source material this good, it's killer - A 2 track mix master is three, four maybe five generations up the food chain from a commercial LP.

One other thought - old tape is a much more problematic medium then old vinyl.

Read this thread to put your expectations in line with what you are likely to experience:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/63578-studer-a812-2-track-should-i-buy.html