Sony Tapecorder 101 Review (Vintage Reel to Reel)

[TheBatsEar]

If you're going to have a tape machine, get one of these - a Nagra T.
A sort of grown up IV-S
(Original photo © NagraAudio)

Hnnng, want!

 

[EJ3]

I do own it. No photoshop there.

Great April Fool's Joke!

 

[AudioTodd]

OK, so I planned this April Fools' joke for almost a year, only to have it go down as a dud. Teaches me to not pull stunts like this in the future!

I can take solace in seeing no one figuring out where the measurements came from. It was from my Nakamichi measurements: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ments-of-nakamichi-dragon-cassette-deck.5595/

I went in Photoshop and extended the peaks in FFT to 0 dB. This is why SINAD didn't agree with it.

Was originally thinking about faking the whole measurement but didn't know how to make it look like tape measurements.

The deck is real by the way. I have yet to power it on but it looks really nice and cute. I don't have any small tape reels to put on it and that is something I need to buy.

You should have given it a SINAD of 107.498 at 6 Vrms and everyone would have got the joke right off! I enjoyed it though!

 

[Rottmannash]

Seriously, this thread had a bad side effect on me, April's fool or not:
I'm now obsessively looking for a cassette deck to restore/rejuvenate.

My wallet still continues to shake nervously...

Would you like to repair my otherwise nice NAD 6240 cassette deck?

 

[Spkrdctr]

And measures better than PSAudio gear

OMG! This requires a Double Facepalm!

 

[seaninbrisbane]

Was I the only person to get straight onto eBay after reading this review? Well done, Amir.

 

[Saponetto]

Would you like to repair my otherwise nice NAD 6240 cassette deck?

Heh, I had it, several years ago... I still remember with a certain pleasure its Dolby-C circuitry and its juicy quality of companding.
I miss it, along with its faithful companion 3020.
Little OT, if may ask, what's going on with your 6240?

 

[mhardy6647]

Was I the only person to get straight onto eBay after reading this review? Well done, Amir.

meh. Just go here and use the order form... and get a brand-new one.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Allied-Catalogs/Allied-Catalog-1963.pdf

Time travel not included.

https://reel2reeltexas.com/vinAd61Sony101.jpg

https://reel2reeltexas.com/vinAd62SonyMultiple.jpg

 

[diddley]

I love the joke Amir

 

[raif71]

 

[bouncingboffin]

LOL I knew there would be a joke item, I've lurked on ASR for years without registering and this article made me register (although I did respond to the Beyer DT-150 review first) Amir overcooked it! My own April fool was a decade or so ago, I spent a whole month (March/April) with an open reel machine (Sony TC-645) trying to get the THD down to 0.5%, the S/N to 60dB, something that I thought would be reasonable, then later, I facepalmed, looking at the front cover of the service manual... 1.2%... 56dB... I like the aesthetics of it, the sound quality is typical of open reel machines of the vintage and my god, if you can pick it up with one hand, you can have it

 

[AudioExplorer]

Great April Fool's joke, but this one made me quite sentimental. My parents had a very similar Sony tape recorder when I was born. This was what I listened to music on for the first few years of my life. And there are pictures to prove apparently that I loved operating it. My Mom still can't get over my driving her crazy since I used to love listening to the music both forwards and backwards when I was a toddler. .

 

[TheBatsEar]

LOL

Welcome my dude, you are home

 

[egellings]

What gets me about R-to-R recorders is how good they can sound in spite of their high distortion figures.

 

[lewdish]

What an awesome little collectable

 

[Dial]

One cannot define a value at two given times.

 

[Jim Shaw]

What gets me about R-to-R recorders is how good they can sound in spite of their high distortion figures.

Most music listeners seem to prefer some distortion, to wit the electric guitar -- as long as it's the type of distortion they enjoy. The problem with tape is that its characteristic distortion is odd-harmonic, which to some is annoying.

If you ever really get your head around "hifi," you realize that it is mostly about reducing annoyances, not about reproducing reality.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

What gets me about R-to-R recorders is how good they can sound in spite of their high distortion figures.

Its all low order distortion and the even orders on a properly running machine are suppressed. So we're really talking 3rd harmonic and a bit of 5th harmonic if the machine is set up right, i.e. the heads are not magnetized, the bias oscillator is not distorted on asymmetrical, and there are no leaky capacitors in the record signal path allowing DC to reach the record head. The THD at operating level is typically 0.6% which isn't all that high. Its the higher order harmonics which grate on the ear, and neither tape or vinyl have those if working properly.