Reel-To-Reel and Tapeheads Thread

A rabbit hole too far for me. The best show demo I ever heard was Magico using a crazy reel-to-reel of a pianist. I actually almost stood to applaud at the end. It was fantastic!

I’ve debated getting one as a decoration, but I know me. And I’m already too far down too many other rabbit holes. Best of luck, and I’ll enjoy watching this thread.
That's a pretty cool story.

I will say what is kind of fascinating is the gear rabbit hole is nearly shallow.
No cart, tonearm, phono stage, or other gizmos to chase.

Yes the media is expensive but the rest of it is settled after initial buy-in.
You can't upgrade anything unless you change an entire deck out.
The maintenance page in the manual is a couple of bullet points.
Oil a bearing and clean the tape heads with IPA regularly.

Of course nothing is perfect but this was an almost perfect audiophile piece in the hay days.
 
Received a nice Maxell take up reel and put the 1957 tape from Nat King on.

Holy smokes this thing sounds fresh!
Insanely cool. His vocals are amazing sounding.

It's so wild with no clicks or pops from the vinyl. The sound is clean as digital but still a deep tubey analog sound.

The cell phone recording is attached but not nearly like the sound in the room.





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A few years ago, I went to see All Them Witches in a 1K capacity club. They were taping their gigs and had everything mixed down to two channels out of the board straight into a sweet Teac reel to reel deck.

Respect to the young'uns.

If you're not familiar, worth your time...

 
Received a nice Maxell take up reel and put the 1957 tape from Nat King on.

Holy smokes this thing sounds fresh!
Insanely cool. His vocals are amazing sounding.

It's so wild with no clicks or pops from the vinyl. The sound is clean as digital but still a deep tubey analog sound.

The cell phone recording is attached but not nearly like the sound in the room.





View attachment 227125
This is great. It makes me very envious and on the cusp of doing something dumb.
 
I didn't spend a fortune to get in but I can say it was worth it.
Tape is worthy of the hype IMO.
Take your time. It's worth getting it right going in.
Interesting 🤔
They are hella cool to watch playing, fast forwarding or rewinding as well.

You can find decent tapes on eBay you said?
 
Interesting 🤔
They are hella cool to watch playing, fast forwarding or rewinding as well.

You can find decent tapes on eBay you said?

Looks like he's recording to tape.

Yes, you can find older 7" reels on the eBays and cogs as well as 10.5" .
The Nat King above was $80 and it's absolutely beautiful for a tape of 1957.

4 track has a boatload more selection of used titles over the years but you give up some fidelity and the bigger reel capability.
 
One strange thing I have discovered in this venture.

After looking at an original KOB Columbia 7.5ips tape up for sale ($500🙄), I noticed it was missing tracks and they lopped of certain tracks from the master to make it fit. Very bizarre and a reason it would be difficult to pay much money for the smaller reel pre-recorded tapes. Even though they sound really awesome.
 
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