My First Reel To Reel - Any Suggestions?

[Beechwoods]

Reposted from a thread lost in the recent database restore...

Hopefully we'll be able to get this thread moving again!

I googled Beechwoods reel to reel and look where it's taken me
I'd love a Nagra but sadly my budget is never likely to run that far.
Can anyone help? I'm a complete newbie to reel to reel who would like a reasonably small player at a good price on ebay, which I could make some nice stereo recordings on and play back a few old reels recorded by my father-in-law off the radio in the early 1960s?
What names should I look out for and should I have a minimum requirement?
Any help would be really appreciated.
Neon

Hi Neon. It's good to have another reel to reel fan here

My preference is for the Pioneer units (701, 707, 901, 909) though these tend to command reasonable prices on eBay. Akai players are well regarded (especially the ones with 'GX' Glass coated heads) - you may pick up a bargain GX model if you're canny. The Sony TC-377 often goes for under £100 and is a very decent entry-level deck, capable of very nice recordings, and good playback with the right tape - though I feel old tape is more of a challenge for mine, in terms of fidelity. The Sony is a big bulky mind you.
Lodgesound and Pulsestudio on here may have some other thoughts. Check out their Gallery postings for some ideas.

If you're up for it you may want to say hello in the 'Welcome' forum and say a little about your system and what music you like

Thanks Beechwoods

I have honed in on your sub £100 comment and started ebaying. It immediately brought up this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sony-3-Head-Re...1%7C240%3A1318

- the worry, of course, is that it will not work properly but it does look rather nice. There's always the bootfair season coming up as well.

Are faulty reel to reels likely to chew tapes in the same way that cassette decks commonly do?

I'll have a think about how to describe my system - thanks for the tip. On the music front I'm rather partial to a bit of early Pink Floyd and Soft Machine.
Neon

The most likely thing wrong with this, is that the belt has snapped. The Sony is a 1 motor machine, and relies upon pulleys and belts to transmit the power around. The belt went on mine, and though I had it serviced professionally at the time, I'd have no qualms about doing the work myself these days. It really isn't difficult. And belts are easily available too.
Reel to reels very rarely chew tapes, especially if you ensure the rubber capstan pads are cleaned with isopropyl alcohol (cleaning is important when playing old tapes as they do shed, and often a lot worse than 30 year old cassette tape). Bad edits on tapes are more likely to cause the tape to slip out of the proper tape path, but any subsequent wrinkling is rarely audible, due to the width of the playback heads and tape. I've seen quite mangled tape pass across reel to reel tape heads without any indication of a problem at all. Reel to reel tape is very resilient in my experience.

Good taste in music, by the way Have you heard the latest Soft Machine archive release 'Drop' - German tour, Autumn 1971. Excellent stuff with the 'rare' Phil Howard on drums lineup. The free-est of the 'free jazz' era Soft Machine lineups. Howard and Elton Dean had real synergy.

I'd always go for a Revox, preferably a B77, as A77's can have crumbling presets and the electronics aren't as good in standard form.

The Akai 4000DS is a hideous, hissy electronics pile of poo, but so many were sold they have an undeserved reputation IMO.

The Sony 377 has an idler-driven flywheel and belt driven hubs. The performance creamed the Akai on direct comparison, but neither are as good as a later Nakamichi - owned good samples of each ad compared....

I'd say any of the cheaper low speed machine (7.5 IPS or under) is inferior to a good Nak on Chrome or Metal tape to be honest. At least a good working A77 or any B77 with good heads will still make good recordings and you can't beat those 10.5" reels spinning away.

With more experience, I'd say a later Ferrograph with fresh idlers is a good thing - the Logic 7 was a goodie.

Tandbergs sound good too, but I have bad memories of a fast winding TD20A shredding a tape - an edit broke...

The technics 1500 was very blingy, but did and still does the job.

If you want to play back some old tapes, first thing is that you have to find out what track configuration and speed they have been recorded with.

Track configuration on 1/4" tape width can be full track, half track, quarter track, four track and 8 track. Again with half track it can be staggered, in line, Ampex gap, time coded and other non-standard configurations.

Speed can be 30ips, 15ips, 7,5ips, 3 3/4ips, 1 7/8ips and even slower if it's been recorded on a logging machine.

Speeds also are measured in cm/s on some machines.

Expect most R2R's from ePay to be faulty.
Calculate a service on top of the price unless you closely know the seller and the way he (ab)used his deck.

GX heads last very long but don't have the sonical qualities of some other head materials.

Understand the difference between consumer decks, semi-pro decks (J-decks) and dedicated pro decks.

Sonic, build and service-accessibility is most usually all better quality on real pro studio, master and editing decks.

Pro Reporter decks don't have to be better in sonics but should still be very sturdy built and have easy service access.

Pro decks will usually have been modular built, have printed circuit boards as insert cards, all allignment points taken to the surface, logic/relay operation, real-time counters, fully balanced circuits etc.

From new, some pro decks would have costet from $~4.500 - ~$25.000,-

The difference in price between consumer decks and semi-pro decks and the true pro decks was huge.
However, on the used market the price differences are not that huge anymore.

Some decks in pro use are worn all the way down from 24/7 use.

Some consumer decks have a great sound quality as well, close to the good pro decks.
But some consumer decks are collectors items more because of their looks or scarcity.

One manufacturer, Otari, is still marketing Pro R2R decks in the very cheap end of the pro
market.

These machines has become very popular now.

You mentioned a Nagra in your OP.
Most Nagra decks are reporter decks.

The Nagra T is a studio deck.
It will be very expensive to purchase.
It's a very sought after collectors Item and an ingeneering piece of art.

Some other pro decks will be preferred for the sonics though.

Very few pro decks are quarter tracks.
I suspect that your prerecorded tapes being quarter track tapes.

I have been using R2R continuously since the 60's and I have been using a lot of machines for reporting, for master recordings, for broadcasting, for logging, for private use, for high end audio on exhibitions etc.

I will be happy to answer what questions you might have further on the subject.

"dolph"

[DSJR]

I still feel the same about my recommendation of Revox B77 (or good "A" at a pinch). They're cheap now, consistent, reliable usually, spares and service is still ok I believe and so many records from the seventies were mastered or even recorded onto them. With an external mixer, the Pro 99 machines may be worth a look if they haven't been shagged to death professionally.

PLEASE avoid the Akai 4000DS and Sony TC377 type machines unless it's to collect.....

Other rare ones like the Revox A700 are silly money now, but to see a good one in operation, especially as the tension arms swung back and forth on play being selected (I never played with real pro machines sadly, so these little things please my little mind.....)

[Beechwoods]

I came across a Teac X-7 R Mk II the other day. Looked like a nice machine. 4 track, Quarter inch, decent specs. Early 80's, looks like a pro-unit to be honest. I'm not familiar with them though. Does anyone have a view on here?

http://www.vintage-audio.com.ua/en/cat/96/431.html

[Beechwoods]

There's a 377 at a shop near me, nice looking, but £250! I wouldn't rate them that highly, but nice ones can be picked up for around the £75 mark, and they are easy to service.

I found I wanted to upgrade not long after getting my 377 though, and I'm starting to think that my Tandberg is the best all-rounder I've got. Though the Pioneer has the edge in terms of top end on 3¾ips tapes.

[DSJR]

Which Tandberg do you have? I liked the basic qualities of the TD20A, but, as I said earlier somewhere, a tape with splices in which played effortlessly on the various Revoxes we had (and Ferrographs and the technics 1500) almost shredded itself on our 20A on first fast winding - the reels just kept going round at gawd knows what rpm.....

[Beechwoods]

Mines a TD-20A. It sounds like the autostop on that one was faulty My Pioneer (RT-707) has the best transport I've seen so far, imo. A friend's Revox B77 kept slipping one particular tape, but the Pioneer was rock-solid...

[neonknight]

Thanks for all your advice I have been taking a look round today and it appears that my minimum budget will need to be around £150 for something that will not feel like a compromise. Is that so or is there a clever bargain to be had somewhere? I'm not sure whether to hold out.

Neon

[Beechwoods]

The clever bargain is to be found through personal contacts. My Tandberg was a gift from a friend (on here, as it happens) though it needed a service which as Dolph says needs to be factored in.

I would hold out. Keep watching eBay, the free-sheets and the Forums.

I guess my main question for you is do you want something to transfer a few home-recorded archive tapes, or do you want a machine that will last you a long time ad give you a lot of 'hi-fi' pleasure?

I've got a feeling you want the latter, in which case welcome to the club

[neonknight]

I've got a feeling you want the latter, in which case welcome to the club

Yep - it's the latter!

Neon

[Beechwoods]

£150 it is then! Patience is the thing, and save some money later for a good service. Let's see what we can do...