Reel to Reel decks

Orpheus10 said;

One always uses headphones when making a tape. Vibration degrades all analog. If you are playing a record, and listening at the same time, the sound is degraded to a minute degree. If you record in silence, this does not occur.

i agree that vibration and reasonance can degrade analog, particularly an Lp. but it's wrong to say that it is a problem in every case. some tt's are designed to effectively eliminate that issue.

i've recorded my Rockport tt with the speakers playing and while monitoring with headphones. there is no audible difference. in other words; feedback from speakers playing is not an issue for this turntable 'to the degree of being audible'. i would not argue that in theory there is some feedback, only that it's not significant enough to justify recording it.

which is why making a copy has zero value, even with top level gear. the copy cannot be as good.

my other turntables use mass and footers to reduce feedback and are effective if not quite as perfectly.

I've made some copies of vinyl on my mci jh 110 at 30ips and tascam br-20 at 15 ips, sound excellent but the vinyl sounds clearly better (wish there was not so much of a difference and think it could be tweaked to be closer..vpi aries/benz/george wright phono ag). Making copies of tapes is a something I still need to do (for sticky shed syndrome tapes, acetates or generally valuable/fragile tapes), tape takes a lot of time and effort, I think I have too many machines! Right now I am focusing on my mci jh110 which I feel sounds better than the tascam br20, technics rs1500 or otari mx5050 but no real comparisons have been made (just an initial impression), somehow I got sucked into the tape vortex (I just bought 5 boxes of 7" reels from an old radio station that I need to go through, they sit next to the 10 boxes of tape I got with the mci).

Andy_P, my 2 track Technics 1500, has new transistiors, pinch rollers, and the capacitors were replaced with "Black Gates". There might be a difference between your deck and mine.

Orpheus10, FWIW, they finally did figure out where they went wrong with the math on bumblebees, about 20-25 years ago- the Reynolds number was wrong.

Orpheus10, good to hear about the rs1500 upgrades. I really like the rs1500, my first plan had been for outboard bottlehead electronics but will focus on transport performance then think about the playback electronics. The J corder decks made me think about possible upgrades to the stock electonics, I haven't even had the chance to use my 1500 much, there are a few corrosion spots on the two tape roller bearing housings that come in contact with tape so I stopped using it until I can replace/address that. Tape is great