Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

---

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Tape Trail ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

I'm surprised no one has mentioned...

Posted by DaveInVA (A) on December 18, 2006 at 07:21:49

In Reply to: What R2R brands are appreciated most by critical audiophiles and why? posted by little help? on December 16, 2006 at 12:56:50:

Crown. I have several starting with mono tube units from the mid 50's to the 800 series solid state units. They are well built and many parts are still available from a guy in Indiana. He will also rebuild them for you. My current collection is over 100 tape machines of various brands and vintages. I also agree with skeptic about the Magnecords. Like him I have several and I like the tube models best. I have several Tapesonic machines one of which I have rebuilt and use it for live vintage recording. They were sort of a poor mans Ampex, very basic but well built, they made both tube and solid state models. Old Revox G36 machines can sound very nice also if you can find the 1/2 track 15 ips version as most that pop up are the 1/4 track 3.75/7.5 ips versions. Also because of their age they almost always need a lot of work to get them going properly. Other early Revoxs such as the A77 and B77 can sound nice but they had soft heads and if they were used commercially they will usually need new head. I like the A77 sound better than the B77 because the A77 is all discreet transistors and the B77 is early op-amp. The pro Revoxs are very nice but good ones don't come cheap. The B62, B67 etc are great machines although parts are getting hard to find for the B62. These were also commonly used in radio stations so many don't come with the meter bridge although they can be use without them. A real nice machine to have is the Nagra 4S series but a nice one will set you back over a grand. A lot depends on exactly what you plan to use the machine for and how primative a transport you can live with. If you plan to mostly play back old tapes you can't go wrong with a early Tandberg in good shape. The Models 6,64 and 64X are the ones to have. They are tube (well the 64x is hybrid), they sound great, are compact and the transports are very gentle on old brittle tapes. The caveat is that most need repairs because the pinch rollers turn to goo and the fiqure 8 belts break and the cork clutches come unglued. Fortunately the belts are still available and their is a guy that rebuilds the pinch rollers for a reasonable price. As others have said its the electronics that make or break it. There are a lot of mediocre sounding decks out there and some real gems also. For instance the Sony 777 has absolutely bullet-proof construction and operation but the playback circuit doubles as a pink noise generator. I've had success modifying them to work very well though. (have SIX of them sitting on my work bench right now in fact)

Dave

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Amplified Parts

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---