SOTA reel to reel players

Jj2468, if treated with care, old tapes can have excellent fidelity even if made in the 1950s.

Ken, I use a sort of commercial timer oven for making pizzas, which works extremely well since it takes a while to warm up. I've also used my oven at home, and just block the door slightly so it can't close completely- I've had good results with that too.

It seems like it might be a bother, but you only have to treat a tape this way maybe every 5-6 years or so. I'm glad I didn't throw out the old tapes for my Mellotron :)

Johnnyb53, years ago I studied digital music in the mid-80s. My 'prof' was a math professor in real-life, who had also been a jazz trumpeter and clarinetist who played with some of the greats in the 60s but real-life meant he was a college professor. He had a few years earlier decided to set up a digital music studio in one of the math classrooms, with a couple of DX-7s and some rack-mounted TXs, etc. He did a lot of composing in digital-land. The funny thing was that he recorded everything on either a really nice Studer studio reel-to-reel at 7.5ips or on Betamax - even though by that time it was long dead. The Betamax had excellent fidelity. I still have my compositions on Betamax - but no player...

Getting back to the original question; It always amazes me that most of us don't think twice about a cartridge or turntable costing in the thousands, but we are afraid to pay $2500 on a decent professional deck.