Please recommend a reel-to-reel player to transferring reels

W

WantToTransfer

New member
I have a box of reels that belond to my parents. The reels are 7" in diameter and 1/4" thick. The reels are in excellent shape, having been stored indoors for years. However, the tape player they had, a Sony Stereo Center 230, is an unusable mess.

I need to get another reel player because I want to transfer these in an assembly line fashion. In other words, connect it to the line-in on the computer, capture with Adobe Audition or Audacity, start a reel playing, walk away, come back in 90 minutes (or whatever) to change reels, etc.

1. Can someone recommend a good and preferably inexpensive reel player for this task?

2. I'm ignorant of the technology. Are reels "double sided" in any way, like a cassette? In other words, once I play them in one direction, can I reverse the reels and play a different recording on the other side of the tape? I'm guessing it's either this, or if you put the reel on backwards it just plays in reverse.
 
You need a 2-channel 4-track (Stereo). There are a lot to choose from. I can tell you one of my favorite decks for 7-1/2 reels. Akai GX-77. I bought mine new in the 80's and they hold up unusually well. They tend to hold their value and they're worth it. This model has auto-reverse. If your tapes already have sensing foil attached to make a machine auto-reverse and play the other side then this is especially useful. If your tapes don't have sensing foil you'll have to flip it manually anyway.

Other less pricey more basic models that perform and sound good are the TEAC X-3, X-300 and the Realistic TR-3000 (Made for Realistic by TEAC and is somewhere between the X-3 and X-300 in design).

There are really too many to name, but these are some I've owned and can recommend.
 
You need to know what speed they were recored at, so that the player has that speed available, here is a list and what they are used for:

15/16ths of an inch per second (in/s) or 2.38 cm/s: used for very long-duration recordings (e.g. recording a radio station's entire output in case of complaints, aka "logging").
1⅞ in/s 4.76 cm/s: usually the slowest domestic speed, best for long duration speech recordings.
3¾ in/s 9.53 cm/s: common domestic speed, used on most single-speed domestic machines, reasonable quality for speech and off-air radio recordings.
7½ in/s 19.05 cm/s: highest domestic speed, also slowest professional; used by most radio stations for "dubs", copies of commercial announcements; Through the early to mid '90s many stations could not handle 15 IPS.
15 in/s (38.1 cm/s): professional music recording and radio programming.
30 in/s (76.2 cm/s): used where the best possible treble response and lowest noise-floor are demanded, though bass response might suffer.[12]

Most domestic tapes would have been recorded at 3 3/4" or 7 1/2", studio tapes probably at 15"

Also the tapes may be 1/2 track or 1/4 track, half track are only played in one direction and used the whole tape width, 1/4 track can be reversed and played the other way for side 2, like a cassette. Most domestic tapes are 1/4 track.

Hope that helps.

Akai made some very good sounding reel to reels, and thew usual suspects like TEAC, Otari, etc may be picked up cheap nowadays.

Alan.
 
i could recomend a machine but since most are 20-40 years old you could buy a working one that could break down. many old machines like Akia are hard to find parts for. lots of old machines have worn out heads. if the machine your parents used had misaligned heads that will be a problem when playing on another machine. some old tapes will flake or have sticky shed syndrome. the easiest and best way is to use a tape to cd transfer service. they take the tapes and set the head alignment to the tape if need be and can add processing and deal with sss and flaking.
 
The Sony Stereo Center 320 was a 3 speed consumer stereo deck so it did not record at 15 or 30 ips. It did not have auto reverse so the tapes would not have the foil senors on them to actuate the auto reverse on any possible replacement deck you decide on. If the tapes were labled in any way to document what speed they were recorded at, that might help in making a buying decision regarding needing a 3 speed deck to reproduce all the possible speed options. But if the tapes are labeled and were recorded at the 3.75 and 7.5 ips speeds only, that would broaden your choices to just get a more up to date deck like the ones Beck mentioned.

It's unlikely there would be any sticky shed issues to worry about as that was a phenomenon more so of back coated tapes from the 70's and 80's. As that Sony deck was from the 60's, odds are the tapes made on it were also from that same era and therefore likely safe.

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Cheers! :)
 
a Teac A6300 would be a good deck. there are quite a few around. the main issue would be head wear. head wear is an issue on all these old decks. you could end up spending more on a deck that needs work than the $1400.00 a transfer service would charge. you might even be able to get a lower price from a transfer service with that many reels. i'm not trying to discourage you, i'm just letting you know theres a lot of worn out junk tape decks that people want big money for that will cost money to repair. even if the deck works when you get it doesnt mean it isnt on its last leg. the best thing to do is look on craigs list and buy one you can see and test. worn heads will have a flat spot in the middle. the pinch roller will probably need the rubber replaced.

what state are you located in ?
 
Where do you live? If in the US go on craigslist. These home units are on there all the time and often dirt cheap.

Heads are easy enough to check. For your ap they dont have to be pristine, but no obvious groove across the face caused by tape travel.

Im not sure Id (personally) worry too much about knowing how the machine you buy is aligned vrs the one that years ago made the original recordings. Close enough, especially if its a matter of recovering them or not. While not ideal you can doctor to taste once you get it in the box with eq.
 
jawbreaker said:
i could recomend a machine but since most are 20-40 years old you could buy a working one that could break down. many old machines like Akia are hard to find parts for. lots of old machines have worn out heads. if the machine your parents used had misaligned heads that will be a problem when playing on another machine. some old tapes will flake or have sticky shed syndrome. the easiest and best way is to use a tape to cd transfer service. they take the tapes and set the head alignment to the tape if need be and can add processing and deal with sss and flaking.
Click to expand...

Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but this is an analog forum. We all use pre-owned equipment. The guidelines for buying anything pre-owend are the same whether buying a car, lawnmower, guitar, other equipment, etc. Make sure it's in good working condition... end of story.
 
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