easyeyes Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 I know that most of you are using turn tables with your Scott gear but just a query/thought. How many of you are using or have used a Reel to Reel connected to your gear? I do not even know if it's possible but I'm curious. I remember going to my friend's house as a kid and seeing those reels and listening to continuous hours of music. As a kid I was mesmerized with the looks of the equipment not the sound. Lately, my curiousity has caused me to dig deeper into the possibility of owning one of these--mostly for nostalgia sake. While talking to my father in law the other day, he mentioned that he had one in working condition that I can have. From personal or other experiences how do you think it will sound with the Scott and Klipsch? EE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Quality open reel decks sound wonderful when quality recordings are played back on them. After all, open reel masters account for about 99.99% of every record or CD you've ever heard. But your main problem will be source material. Prerecorded reels, with a few exceptions, are fairly bad. They were run off at very high speed on huge duplicating machines and a lot of times they are made for playback at 3.75 inches per second instead of 7.5 ips. (Studio masters are normally recorded at 15 ips or 30 ips). Plus prerecorded reels weren't typically made from a master tape made from multitracks, but from a copy of a mastertape used for records. That means at least another generation away. End result of all this: high speed duplicating, slow speed playback, higher generation source--a lot more noise and a lessening of fidelity. If you record live events, say a friend's band in a club, recording on reel to reel will yield great results. But I can't think of much use for one nowadays except to play back reel to reel tape collections. Nostalgiawise they can't be beat. And sonically, played back on vintage equipment, will be fine. There's nothing fundamentally different about using reel to reel as a playback source--you still want to use whatever amp and speakers sounds best to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whell Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Truly depends on the machine your father in law has. Some of the high dollar gear from Teac sounded great, as long as the source material was first rate. Lower end models from Teac and Akai sounded fair at best. Pioneer's RT-707 or 701 gear is much sought after, though as popular as it was, I can't say that I listened to any of those machines. Some of Teac's equipment came with a factory installed DBX noise reduction circuit. I rmember hearing one of these and thought it sounded fabulous, even at slower recording speeds. No doubt that if the machine has not been used in a while it will need a serious cleaning, lubrication and demagnetization to sound it's best. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShapeShifter Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Using my 70's era Akai reel with my 60's Fisher 800B receiver. The Fisher was made to accomodate the use of reel to reel tape/recorders. Imagine many other period receivers/integrated amps have similar provisions. Wes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 The 'accomodating' for reel to reel decks shouldn't mean more than another set of line inputs. They aren't magic. Just finished reading an article by a mastering lab, and the owner prefers to get masters from studios on 1/2 inch tape. He can deal with any format, including 16/44.1 and up. I still have my TEAC four track reel to reel. They still have their places. Although you hear so much about ProFools, er, Tools, there are still a lots of studios using two inch tape decks. Maintenance is pretty high, and tape costs are high (reel of 2 inch tape is about $135). For the consumer, tape is about $24 for a 10.5 inch reel. Usually a special order item now. For best results, your deck needs to be biased for the tape stock used. Tape bias mixes in a high frequency signal with the lower audio freq., to allow those signals to be put on tape. Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptnBob Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Another problem to consider - many of the older tape stocks are deteriorating - the lubricant is long gone, and the binder (the glue that holds the oxide to the backing) dries up and lets little flakes fall off on anything they touch - like, say tape heads, pressure pads and guides. Parts for open reels can be pricey and hard to find, with all manner of odd problems developing. I've heard of Revoxes with circut boards that simply disintegrated. An old open reel is a lot like an old car - lots of moving parts and potential wear items. Still, if I was looking today for an open reel machine, I'd look for: A. - Otari B. - Teac - not the best sounding, but well constructed. Avoid the early 3300s, thought - the ones with the flipper switch on the lower right side. The switch caused trouble, and cost a breathtaking amount of money to replace in the seventies. I can only shudder at what it would cost today. C. - Studer - Used a lot in professional and semi-professional installations. Good sounding and rugged. D. - Revox - Well thought of in it's day, but several examples I've seen lately are just falling apart. E. - Tandberg - The tri-moter decks weren't bad - good sounding, but not as tough as contemporary Teac. The 6, 64, 64x series sounded good - vacuum tube decks, but lots of clutches and belts to go bad - I'd avoid them. F. - Sony - Tri-motors weren't bad, stay away from the single motor decks. G. - Crown - ruggedly built, a little thin sounding. Mine haven't grown old gracefully, and have developed odd and expensive problems. In general, stay away from single motor decks-there's a lot more to go wrong. Also, run, don't walk from any machine that looks like it was used in a school or a radio station. On older equipment, you may find an input marked "Tape Head," NAB, or something similar. THIS IS NOT FOR A MODERN TAPE RECORDER! In olden days, some manufacturers sold tape transports without any electronics. The idea was it would become the counterpart of a turntable, playing prerecorded stereo tapes, with the equalization and gain provided by the preamp. If you try to use this input with a line level out like that provided by just about all tape decks in the last 40 years or so, you will get a lot of distortion and a lot more volume that you really want. For some reason Marantz saw fit to include a tape head input (along with a microphone input!) on their reissue of the Model 7 preamp, but I think that was in the interest of historical accuracy. Sorry to get so pedantic here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 You could get an Ampex as well. Some of the two tracks were actually made by Tascam, the professional side of Teac. My 3340s is a tank, but needs a pinch roller and a few other things. I have moved some tapes to the pc at 24 bit, and made some mixes. They sound very good. You could throw Fostex into the mix as well. Some of their machines are solid. Not nearly as solid as the Otari, Ampex, Studer lines though. Or the older Scully machines. Did an albom on Scully four tracks once. Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 First, I respectfully disagree with whell about the cheaper Akai's. The 4000D at less the 200.00 new was suberb. All mechanical, bullettproof. Used one for years and loved it both sonically and mechanically. I have both a Teac and a Sony. I will ditch both of them within the year as I complete transferring my collection to 24/96 digital, which is the first medium to equal or surpass the reel to reel. All my stuff from about 1976 on was DBX encoded and sounded/still sounds great. However, these decks are big, subject to breakdown, and the tape has a limited lifespan. Time to move on... Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easyeyes Posted April 15, 2003 Author Share Posted April 15, 2003 Thanks for the inputs, I did not know there were so many reel to reel models. The only ones I remember was Akai and Teac. The next time I talk to my father in law I will ask what kind it is. Knowing him hes had this from the seventies, he likes to hold on to old stuff like this From what you guys are saying owning one of these can be very challenging and costly. I listen to nothing but CDs and the thought of putting many CDs on a reel to reel sounds more inviting than purchasing a CD recorder. I'll have to hold off on a recorder because my next purchase will probably be a new cd player. Thanks for your input. EasyEyes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShapeShifter Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 ---------------- On 4/15/2003 11:35:17 AM CaptnBob wrote: On older equipment, you may find an input marked "Tape Head," NAB, or something similar. THIS IS NOT FOR A MODERN TAPE RECORDER! In olden days, some manufacturers sold tape transports without any electronics. The idea was it would become the counterpart of a turntable, playing prerecorded stereo tapes, with the equalization and gain provided by the preamp. If you try to use this input with a line level out like that provided by just about all tape decks in the last 40 years or so, you will get a lot of distortion and a lot more volume that you really want. .... ---------------- CaptnBob, Very well stated. That's part of the "accomodation" aspect of some vintage units. Some contain switches for internal Tape Speed settings as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Easyeyes: Ripping your CD's to hard drive is the cheapest and most convenient way to access them, and costs no more to get started than a decent CD player. I rarely handle a CD except to dump it to the drive. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Easy Eyes, There's just no point at all in putting CDs on reel tapes. You'd have as much in ten rolls of good blank tape as you would in a computer CD burner. And you couldn't access track no. 8 within a second on a reel. And you'd have some extra hiss too. Unless you're going to record someone live, or play back already existing tapes, there's just no reason to go that route. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 I had a Sony R-R with three heads in high school days. It was good for dubbing LP's. Saved some wear. At 7.5 ips with good tape it was very difficult to tell the input from the output, this was possible with the separate record and playback heads. The high school had a Roberts with a cross field head. This was something where a head applying bias, contacted the non-oxide side of the tape as it went by the record head. Bias has something to do with getting the magnetic oxide magnitized to begin with. The signal is maybe 25000 Hz as I remember. It either goes into the record head, or the cross field head. Anyway, it seems that the magnitizing from the record signal dictates where the magnitizing settles down to a permanent state. The Roberts was excellent. Some later ones had a side slot to record 8-tracks. No cross field there. There were some pre recorded tapes available which were fairly impressive. Mainstream LP releases were sometimes available in 7.5 ips tape. My guess is that Henry Kloss displaced all this with his cassettes with Dolby. It all sounds kludgy. Yet it was a very attractive alternative to the pops and crackle of LPs. PWK also played with producing R-R recordings under the name of Klipschtape. I dunno much about that but there was some brief discussion of it during the Pilgemage to Hope a few years ago. Gil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Easyeyes, So clarification may be in order. Most consumer R-R are quarter track stereo, on quarter inch tape. You record two stracks (stereo) in one direction, get to the end and flip the tape and do the same the other way. The tracks are split, so you record (and play back) on tracks 1-3. Tracks 2-4 are lined up to record or play back when the tape is flipped (becoming 1-3 in essence). The early two track machines used half inch tape in one direction. The tape and electronics dictated that for the quality desired. Then they cam up with a three track on half inch. I have a CD remastered from a three track tape. Then they made a four track on half inch tape, where you could record all four tracks at once (mix down later). Eventually, Les Paul worked with folks to make a one inch eight track (not to be confused with auto 8 track cartridges). Then he could overdub more guitar parts with himself (was going to say play with himself, but that doesn't sound quite right). As tape and electronics got better, they moved to 2 inch tape and 16 or 24 tracks, utilizing Dolby NR and dbx NR. Then the prosumer stuff came out with half inch and 16 tracks. The tape costs are considerable, as well as how heavy duty the transport had to be. The older big decks had 1 1/2 inch cast and machined aluminum chassis for the hub motors and head blocks to mount on. No wonder they cost in the thousands of dollars ( not $3-4, but $30-40k and more). If you ever saw the tension get messed up on a big R-R when in fast forward, with the reel weighing in at about ten pounds or so it isn't a pretty sight. Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khorn58 Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 Dont forget 3m pro decks some of the best 1/2 track master decks ever built were 3m. Electric ladyland in new york used them on all the hendrix recodings they did. as well as many other top studios. #m not only made some of the best tape but the berst deck to. They even made a 3" 32 track deck . I picked up a 3m 2 track the size of a large washing machine at 250 ponds. Former Electric lady land mixdown deck The tape it makes are unreal better than any digital deck or hard drive I have heard. not as quite as digital but the tone is fat and warm its no wionder many studio still use them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easyeyes Posted April 16, 2003 Author Share Posted April 16, 2003 Sounds too confusing, remember I said that I was a kid when I was intrigued by the reel-to-reels. After considerable thought last night, I will receive the unit as a gift but I will not put a lot of effort into connecting it to my system. Mallet/PaulParrot: I kept up with the thread several weeks ago that you guys were chiming in on about computers (???) and top of the line CD players or something like that. The problem is, I work with computers all day at work and when I get home that's the last thing I want to do--look at my computer. All of my friends and family keep in contact with me through email at work because they know that I rarely use my home computer. I've been thinking about getting a CD burner for the house though, the ones at work are pretty nice. What about degradation of the sound when saved to a hard disk and copied back to a CD for listening to compilations of my favorite songs on one? EE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 There is no degradation transfering to computer or back to CD. The Antec "Sonata" and "Fusion" cases are designed with the visual aesthetics of media in mind, as well as to be quiet. I work with computers all day as well, but that doesn't prevent me from enjoying the fiddle-free factor of being able to jump from Midnight Oil to Gabrieli on a whim without having to get up. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Dave is sure correct about there being no degradation when copying digital files. You WILL have degradation if your copies are being ripped to MP3 files. If you pull them off to wav files there should be no difference in quality. The size will stay the same then though. I have made an mp3 at 320kbits from a 24bit/88.2 wav file. The file is way smaller and the quality is quite passable. If you stuck both of them in wavelab I'm sure you would see a difference, but for playback in the living room it still sounds okay. Marvel I had forgotten the 3M machines. They were BIG too. A friend of mine still has a four track master of something of mine, done on a 3M. Now, where does he live ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 I've used reel to reel (Revox) & Nakamichi Dragon cassette, both recording the same thing at the same time, making my own recordings. I felt the Revox had a slight edge in the fidelity department, however the Dragon had significantly less noise. Using commercial tape recordings is something else. As previously mentioned, most commercially available tape recordings (reel to reel, or cassette) leave much to be desired for a number of reasons. Keep in mind that magnetic media doesn't last forever either. The magnetic strength of the media deteriorates over time. I once pulled out some backup floppy discs for an old Apple computer, only to find out that after 10+ years of storage, there was no longer anything readable on them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Favog Posted April 16, 2003 Share Posted April 16, 2003 Many eons ago I had a 6-head Ampex 300B and at my job there was a couple Pioneer RT707 and RT909 decks. I loved that 909 but the Ampex was a close second. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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