Gino's Toys

[Thermionic]

This is a sort of vintage odds and ends system set up in a spare room which we call my 'museum'. The sub is not a perfect match with the Ls3a’s but seems quite good enough for the moment. The rest of the kit has been cobbled together over the years. No exotic leads and no mains conditioning (I am a philistine) Not Hi-Fi by many standards but just a bit of fun to play with.:)


http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Speakers.jpg
Goodmans 15 Ohm Ls3/5a's, Atacama Stands, Quad 303 or Leak Stereo 20, BK Sub, Period G Plan Table, Lotus Elan cam cover;)


http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Kit-1.jpg
Audio Research LS7, Stellavox SU8, Sony D50, Technics SLD4, Dynavector 17R, Trichord Dino, Decca Dac, Sony MiniDisc(!) Stax Lambda Sig. System, Home built 'Gainclone' amp, Stax energiser, MiniBox E+, Stax SR5's (with home made silver leads), Lab PSU (for the Stellavox), Magnum Dynalab FT101a, HHB 'Burnit ' (AES into the Decca dac), Old computer trolly (to get at the leads easily)


http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/NagraTEtc-1.jpg
Nagra T-Audio, Dolby A361 X2, Yamaha CT7000 (8 element in the loft) Home built Speedframe

[Ali Tait]

Well all I can say is "wow". Some great vintage stuff there!

[chris@panteg]

wow that nagra !

[Macca]

wow that nagra !

Yes, my thought exactly!

[Thermionic]

Yes, the T is a remarkable thing. Not the best sounding machine ever perhaps but a marvellous piece of engineering.

The transport was taken from their Ti instrumentation recorder, and I believe the T was introduced as a ‘base station’ for the portable recorders. A basic Stereo version was also available and the BBC had a few, but it was very expensive compared with other professional machines from the likes of Studer. When the time code option was introduced the big Nagra became popular as a lay-back machine for video post-production (as the video facilities had the money).

It took me some years to find my own example and I sold a good Pr99 to help finance it. But while bettering the Revox in many ways, the Nagra is a high precision and fantastically complex device. So while I was able to sort out most problems with the PR99, if the T goes bad I have had it!:scratch:

Here’s a picture of the beast opened.


http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/IMAG0000.jpg

[Spectral Morn]

Very nice set up, very nice indeed :)


Regards D S D L

[Lodgesound]

and......is that an Ampex VPR80 I see a corner of in one pic??......complete with TBC6??

[Lodgesound]

The Nagra T's transport is indeed a thing of beauty.......it puts to shame (sorry...wipes the floor) with almost all other tape transport mechanisms being a true twin capstan dynamically tensioned deck.

[Thermionic]

Lodgesound well spotted sir, that is indeed a VPR80 and a TBC6 in the corner. They are both sort of working at the moment though as you probably know Ampex made their money on servicing their machines.

I put together a small collection of mid 80’s broadcast kit some years ago (probably saving most of it from landfill) and I keep it dusted and operational the best I can.

You probably also know that in the big T the right capstan is quartz locked and the left one is servoed to the tape tension sensor in the head block. I am not sure about the ultimate audio quality as there are a fair number of ICs in the audio paths. Not impossible I suppose to fit better electronics externally but my machine sounds pretty good in my modest system.

[Beechwoods]

Wow... nice to see some fantastic open reel tape gear on display! The Nagra T is impressive, but the Stellavox as well?! You are definitely a connoisseur! I'd be interested to see some more pics of it if you have any... have you had the chance to compare it with any of the Nagra portables? There's definitely divided camps when it comes to Stellavox vs Nagra... Superfically I prefer the Nagra IV aesthetics but I've not had the chance to play with a Stellavox yet. I'd be interested in your thoughts!

[Lodgesound]

I can remember in my BBC days having a Nagra T sync. locked to a Rank Cintel Mark 3 telecine machine using Arriflex timecode to transfer rushes of "Between The Lines".....

I swore then I would eventually own one and now I have 2 of them and a Nagra D. Sonically they are excellent in my opinion - we used to use T's in the BBC edit suites as lay-off recorders when editing on One Inch C Format tape as they would chase timecode so easily and accurately......how things change in technology...

[Thermionic]

Thanks for the kind remarks Beechwoods, I will try and sort out some pictures of the little beast. Unfortunately I have not done back to back audio testing of the Stellavox against the Nagra portables, though I was lent for photographic purposes a Nagra III, IV and the instrumentation version for some months.

I always thought that the slightly smaller and more compact Stellavox was a nicer machine as an object of desire. Georges obviously was aiming to improve upon Stephan’s recorders, and I feel he succeeded in many ways; the way the control panel is recessed, the very strong sandwich construction and of course the modular construction of the heads and electronics. One might also argue that the direct drive capstan servo motor was an advance on the Nagra motor.

But in the flesh you can see why Nagra became De facto while the Stellavox remaind an interesting alternative. The Stellavox is more like a watch with its satin chromed castings and stainless steel socket head screws, it looks more finished. By comparison the Nagra is bigger, a bit more clunky and rather bolted together looking with its slotted cheese head screws. While the Stellavox’s form follows function rather elegantly the Nagra follows it warts and all.

As regards sound, some say the Stellavox sounds better, others say different, I can’t really comment. One of the big things that let the Stellavox down was the rather silly 10 Inch reels adapter. Of course you often need these for location music recording and while Nagra basically provided a Nagra T reel motor servo system in a (very expensive) bolt on box, Stellavox gave you a plate with some rubber bands. I suppose this reflected the different company’s development budgets. I have not compared the two marques back to back, but when I was looking for a machine of this quality (already having a couple of Uhers) while I could have just as easily obtained something like a Nagra IV, I put my money on the SU8 and still don’t regret it.

[Thermionic]

Another Picture:

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Untitled-4.jpg

HiFiman 801 DAP, ex BBC HH am8/12 amp, Tannoy 12 Inch Monitor Gold in homebuilt Lancaster enclosure.

The other day I unpacked this old warhorse that I built in 1972. I couldn’t afford to build 2 of them back then (this one having cost around £60), and yet sadly never felt enthused enough to build another.

I had just been working in a minor recording studio and we used 15 Inch Reds in Lockwoods, so having something similar seemed a very good plan at the time. As many know Tannoys were the standard monitor speaker in UK comercial studios during the 1960s, so what better loudspeaker to listen at home on?

Later in the mid 70s I recall that Angus Mackenzie wrote an article in Studio Sound questioning the validity of the Tannoy for critical monitoring. This was around the time the Spendor BC1 was introduced, and I recall with a recording engineer AB’ing a pair of BC1s with a pair of Golds in Lancaster cabinets. To my chagrin the Spendors (at least for the classical and Jazz master tapes used that day) seemed to be an obvious advancement.

But this old friend remains a fun speaker to use and has lots of character and grunt. It makes a good contrast to the other speakers I have, and is also a rather good (if large!) non-Ipod dock.

[Thermionic]

These are a few pictures of my old Stellavox SU8 that I dug out of my web site. Flawed in many ways perhaps, it is none the less a stunning bit of old fashioned engineering. Now that portable sound recording has become increasingly trivial, this was what it once took to make a reliable and high quality portable sound recorder.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Front.jpg

The transport is based on a direct-drive servoed capstan motor that drives the tape spools by a pair of round belts. Tape tensions are controlled by simple (though elegant) mechanical linkages. The electronics are mostly modular consisting of a motherboard fixed under the deck into which various screened modules plug in.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Frontoninsidesgeneralview.jpg

The transport has 4 speeds built in (3.75 to 30 I.P.S.), however each speed requires the use of a separate plug-in head block that contains the correct bias and eq components for that speed (and tape type). There were a number of different head blocks available for the various speeds as well as differing film sync standards.

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Headblock.jpghttp://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Headblockcoveroff.jpghttp://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/VPR5/Headblockunderside.jpg

I suppose that this machine was manufactured in the early 1980's.

[Reid Malenfant]

That tape deck is a thing of beauty :) I have never seen one in my life though it does look slightly similar to a Nagra of one sort or another :scratch:

Never seen anything like that though with different head blocks, 5 heads as well, what the heck is going on there? :stalks:

That's some funky bit of kit :wow:

[Thermionic]

Mark, the two extra heads were for the film recording aspects of the machine.

A crystal generated low frequency (50 Hz) ‘pilot’ tone was recorded on a narrow centre track between the normal audio tracks. The two small ‘brass’ heads were the record and replay for this tone (the other heads being erase, record and replay). The idea was that by recording a stable signal on the tape in the field, any tape stretch or slight speed drift of the recorder during a take could be compensated for by the playback machine following the frequency of the off-tape signal back at the edit. This allowed lip sync to be maintained over full magazines of film.

It’s a fascinating story of the two Swiss gentlemen that were responsible for these two famous machines. One successful, one perhaps less so. The Stellavox might be regarded as a more evolved and compact Nagra. But because Stellavox was a much smaller company it did not seem to have the luck or technical resources needed to compete successfully, indeed the story of Stellavox is quite a heroic saga.

[Reid Malenfant]

Thanks for the concise reply Gino, very clever indeed i might add :) Frankly that is quite ingenious & even though it adds some complexity i'm surprised that the same kind of system has never (to my knowledge) been incorporated into any other top flight recorder :scratch:

Maybe upping the frequency to 10KHz & monitoring that would get wow & flutter down to ridiculously low levels that even Quartz locked stuff can only dream about :eyebrows:

I can understand the 50Hz though due to syncronisation with film.

Now i'm even more impressed :)