Well that's just gR8...

[jedblue]

Picked up a little Fostex R8 off ebay the other day. It's in really good nick and quite neat. There's no 388's around these parts Johnnie so this is as close as I can get. I've hooked it up to one of the live sound Alto 4 bus mixer's I've got and it seems to work just fine. I've got a bit of outboard I can use with it and I'm looking forward to giving it a run. I just use the 1/4" SM911 on it that I use on the Revox and the Otari. I couldn't really justify going to 1/2" eight track so this way I can keep the tape costs as low as possible and still have a bit of fun.

 

[jjones1700]

Hey Jed, nice little set up there. Like I said, I lucked out on finding a 388 locally.

From what I've seen when I looked at tape at US Recording, 1/4" and 1/2" are almost the same price now. What gives with that??? When I bought my first reel of SM-911 back in '07, it was about $35. Now it's about $60! 1/2" is $74. Hell, 1/4" LPR-35 is right at $65! Outrageous either way you look at it.

Don't even get me started on what people are asking for Type II cassettes nowadays either...

 

[jedblue]

Aye Johnnie, I don't bother with the 10 1/2" reels, I just buy the little 7" ones of 1/4". It's all the R8 can take anyway. I think they come in at about $16 a pop. I still get bulk C60 Type II's for $1.30 each in cases. Last time I bought a hundred to keep my 424 fed for years.

 

[jpmorris]

From what I've seen when I looked at tape at US Recording, 1/4" and 1/2" are almost the same price now. What gives with that??? When I bought my first reel of SM-911 back in '07, it was about $35. Now it's about $60! 1/2" is $74. Hell, 1/4" LPR-35 is right at $65! Outrageous either way you look at it.

Here it's £34.42 vs £48.52, inc sales tax. For some obscure reason 1/2" SM900 is a few pounds cheaper at £45.67.

Total prices in USD would be about $54 and $76 for 1/4" and 1/2" 911 respectively.

For some reason I have a 2006 catalogue for the same company in my drawer at work. That was pre-RMGI, but for comparison, the prices for 456 were £27.63 ($44) and £46.02 ($73)

To answer your question "What gives with that?", I'd suspect it's to do with the value of the Euro.

 

[Blue Jinn]

Cool!

FYI, you can get Quantegy 457 for about $29/reel from the Quantegy, "we're working on bringing it back" site.

 

[The Great Cobb]

Fostex

I love this dude. One of the only interesting people on youtube. Thats right, i said it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAtgFj3IXiY