Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Reel to Reel

Hi everybody!

Since I (re)started to listen to vinyl on my new Goldring (with amazing results) I became more and more tempted to try the reel to reel experience ( after 40 years of..."silence").I would like to buy the Akai Gx 747(preferably dbx)or Gx77 but I don't know what would be the best source.I know that this is a risky option-especially from ebay-, but I would ask you guys for any opinion/suggestion in this matter, general or particular.

Thank you in advance for your kindness!

Regards,
Octavian

Octavian, good to hear from you again; I recall some discussion of beautiful classical music we had a couple years ago. I don't have anything helpful on your present question, unfortunately, and don't have any knowledge of reel-to-reel recorders. As far as ebay, I've bought just a few relatively inexpensive new items there and had no problems, but more expensive used equipment can be more risky, as you point out. A seller with a lengthy history of satisfaction would be helpful, of course.

There's six reel to reels on audiogon right now. (I just had to go look) Prices from $150 to $550. The $550 one looked like a steal- I had to get outa there before I bought something.
My sister picked one up at a pawn shop or some such place recently, It had to have been cheap.
I remember as a kid thinking how cool those were. Alas, they were out of style by the time I could afford one.

PS- if you score one were gonna want pictures and commentary- share the new toy thrill, ya know.

Is the attraction of reel to reel due to the music that can only be found in that format or is it a sound quality thing? Call me uneducated on the matter.

I would expect it to be sound quality. I owned a Technics unit many years ago and the sound was so much better on reel to reel than from a record.

Hi pizoni,

I've owned several open-reel machines over the years (I still have a Sony that needs lubrication, etc.).

With older reel-to-reel machines, what happens is that the lubrication dries up and the belts and the rubber pinch rollers (a pinch roller pushes the tape against the metal capstan of the electric motor) dry out and get hard. All this causes erratic speed operation and flutter (audible rapid speed variations).

So that's the first thing you should look out for.

More expensive open-reel machines like Revox used three motors (two reel motors and one for the capstan) and relay controls but often still had mechanical brakes to slow down the reels when you re-wind. The felt pads on the brakes also wear out and may need replacement.

You can examine a machine for record/play head wear as well.

These machines can be refurbished at some cost, of course.

Regards,
Alan

Peter,

As Rock Head noted, it was sound quality. Also, in the 1950s and '60s, before Ray Dolby introduced Dolby Noise Reduction for the cassette tape medium, if you wanted to record high-fidelity music at home or in live venues, it was open-reel or nothing.

Back then, cassette recorders were suitable only for dictation, strictly low-grade, low-fi.

Reel-to-reel also had lots of advantages over vinyl. No problems with "rumble" (the sound of the turntable belt/motor mechanism), much less flutter as long as you recorded at 7.5 or 15 inches per second (ips) and generally excellent frequency response from 25 or 30 Hz to 15 kHz or more. Plus tape noise was low enough that you didn't need noise reduction. You can still hear residual tape hiss on old recordings transferred to CD that haven't been processed with noise-gating and other noise filtering.

The distortion/overload character of open-reel was also very forgiving and generous, far better than cassette machines that came along later on.

So you could exceed the theoretical maximum recording level by as much as 6 to 10 dB before distortion became audible, hence you could record a surprisingly wide dynamic range. And the analog distortion with open reel was very different than say, a phono cartridge beginning to mistrack with highly modulated (loud) music passages. With vinyl that becomes much worse as the cartridge approaches the center of the disc and the sound gets really nasty and congested on loud passages.

None of that happened with open-reel. Any serious audiophile in the '50s, '60s, and '70s owned an open-reel machine.

Plus it was fun watching those big reels rotate and the big VU meters (record-level meters). I love spotting big open-reel machines in the background of Hollywood movies from that era that used "swinging bachelor" pads as locations.

Regards,

Thanks for educating me, alan.

I loved my great uncle's reel-to-reel. He built an old country-style pub in his basement and the reel-to-reel sounded fantastic. It brings back some good memories.

One of my friends was into high end audio 20-odd years ago. Lived up in Pefferlaw in a wonderful old house with his wife and quite a few cats. Used to drive down to New York every so often to pick up "first generation" tapes, supposedly one copy removed from the master tape and the best sound source available at the time.

I remember us standing in the front hall watching in horror as two cats started fighting on the shelf behind the tape deck, and watching the deck slowly topple five feet to the floor.

No cats were permanently harmed but the offending pair immediately found a new home with the Pefferlaw Cat Lady.