Some of you know that I am a fan of Reel to Reel tape decks. There is no more beautiful machine than a R2R. Watching those reels turn and VU meters bounce substantially adds to my enjoyment of music. The fidelity also can be superb, and jaw droppingly good, limitations of the format notwithstanding.
Alas the last of the R2R manufacturers (Otari) just discontinued production of these units so if you want one, you have to buy a used one and refurbish it. Or get it from an outfit that refurbishes them before sale. One such outfit is the company j-corder which happens to be 15 minutes from where we live. They buy used Technics decks, bring up to spec and then add as much bling as you may want.
Jeff Jacobs of J-Corder was on hand at our February meeting of the Pacific Northwest Audio Society. Here is a shot of him, the decks and the room where the meetings are held:
As you can see, the room doesn't have much absorption so tends to sound a bit bright.
The fit and finish on these machines is amazing. Everything can be customized from paint color of the facia to knobs and such:
The cost starts at around $5,000:
And climbs up to cool $15,000 with all the fancy paints and options:
Machines look a little naked without the big reels (see on the right):
Sadly the rear of the units are as pedestrian as they came with particle board sides and pressed board for the back:
Claimed to fame was the tape path which is held constant on both sides, resulting in very low wow and flutter.
Working on the unit is a nightmare as everything is built up from the front face of the unit. That means to get to anything , you have to disassemble the whole unit!
Anyway let's talk about the sound. The demo tape that was brought was a copy of Yello's various albums!
Yes, you heard that right. We were brought a dupe of a CD. I must say the experience was disappointing. My digital version of the same runs circles around what I heard there. The standard way to demo a tape is using copies of analog masters. A copy of a synthetically produced digital recording is not where it is at. The sound was very bright to me and the peaks distorted. There was no merit to tape recording that I could detect.
Requests were made for other types of music but none were brought. Fortunately Rene, the meeting organizer had some old commercial recordings of Miles Davis which saved the day:
There were 7 1/2 ips rather than 15 and so signal to noise ratio was not great. Still, enjoyable and far better demo content than Yello.
The pre-amp was this tube unit:
So all in all, it was a missed opportunity to showcase the format. My experience is with my Otari tape deck which is a professional unit. Perhaps the Technics sounds worse. Or it was all the fault of demo material.
As always though, spending time with friends and fellow audiophiles was the main reason to be there. And on that front, an enjoyable time was had despite the 150 mile round trip in rain and traffic.
Alas the last of the R2R manufacturers (Otari) just discontinued production of these units so if you want one, you have to buy a used one and refurbish it. Or get it from an outfit that refurbishes them before sale. One such outfit is the company j-corder which happens to be 15 minutes from where we live. They buy used Technics decks, bring up to spec and then add as much bling as you may want.
Jeff Jacobs of J-Corder was on hand at our February meeting of the Pacific Northwest Audio Society. Here is a shot of him, the decks and the room where the meetings are held:
As you can see, the room doesn't have much absorption so tends to sound a bit bright.
The fit and finish on these machines is amazing. Everything can be customized from paint color of the facia to knobs and such:
The cost starts at around $5,000:
And climbs up to cool $15,000 with all the fancy paints and options:
Machines look a little naked without the big reels (see on the right):
Sadly the rear of the units are as pedestrian as they came with particle board sides and pressed board for the back:
Claimed to fame was the tape path which is held constant on both sides, resulting in very low wow and flutter.
Working on the unit is a nightmare as everything is built up from the front face of the unit. That means to get to anything , you have to disassemble the whole unit!
Anyway let's talk about the sound. The demo tape that was brought was a copy of Yello's various albums!
Yes, you heard that right. We were brought a dupe of a CD. I must say the experience was disappointing. My digital version of the same runs circles around what I heard there. The standard way to demo a tape is using copies of analog masters. A copy of a synthetically produced digital recording is not where it is at. The sound was very bright to me and the peaks distorted. There was no merit to tape recording that I could detect.
Requests were made for other types of music but none were brought. Fortunately Rene, the meeting organizer had some old commercial recordings of Miles Davis which saved the day:
There were 7 1/2 ips rather than 15 and so signal to noise ratio was not great. Still, enjoyable and far better demo content than Yello.
The pre-amp was this tube unit:
So all in all, it was a missed opportunity to showcase the format. My experience is with my Otari tape deck which is a professional unit. Perhaps the Technics sounds worse. Or it was all the fault of demo material.
As always though, spending time with friends and fellow audiophiles was the main reason to be there. And on that front, an enjoyable time was had despite the 150 mile round trip in rain and traffic.
