Conversion to 2-Track

[Midlandmorgan]

Howdy...Many years ago I traded into a 70's era Akai reel machine...2 tracks one direction 2 tracks the other (hence the marketing 4 track)...anyway it had been sitting collecing dust when I was booked to take a client's 1/4" analog recordings, clean them up, and put onto CD.

After some serious cleaning, tightening, and biasing, the machine performed very well, and reproduced the materials better than I had hoped for...which leads me to a question:

I have to wonder what the feasability of turning this machine into a submaster mix deck. Replacing the heads with a 2 track instead of the quasi-4 track would (in theory) provide a much larger contact surface...

Any one tried this?

 

[Peter Maydew]

I built my own tape recorder years ago, and there are lots of problems awaiting an upgrade like this.

The new heads you get will need a lot of physical alignment work - assuming you can source some which are the same size; if not, there's some precision machining ahead of you.

The heads will also need electronic alignment to set up bias level, recording level, and erase efficacy. Chances are you'll have to redesign the recorder's circuitry unless the new heads have exactly the same characteristics.

When this is finished, you'll have a tape recorder with 70's circuitry and 30 year old mechanical parts. Doesn't sound worth the effort to me, even if you DO have a well equipped workshop and electronics lab at your disposal.

If the machine gives results that you're happy with, use it as it is. For playback duties only, the only problem should be slightly worse signal to noise ratio. If it has faults, get something newer.