I just bought a reel to reel, after all these years of telling everyone how stupid they are if they do it!

Personally I'd stick with Revox but always check the Rifa caps before switching on for the first time. If you want something guaranteed to work then you probably need to go to a dealer because just about any machine could have something wrong with it. At least the issues with Revoxes are well known, spares are available (though sometimes at a price) and they're easy to work on.
 
I had not realized Rob that you had the Revox PR99? This is perhaps THE most desirable version of the deck and there was an interesting feature about it in Sound on Sound a few months ago.
If it wasn't too expensive, might have been worth further investigation?

Dave.
 
The seller tells me he'd never plugged it in but has some others. I told him that if he has a working one that doesn't go up in smoke I may still be interested. I'm waiting till ebay give me the money back first.
 
There's an ASC PR99 near you currently at £495 on Ebay so you could probably pop round and check it out before bidding. It is shown powered up but is collection only so wouldn't attract as many buyers as one that could be posted. Reel to reel prices have gone up dramatically so that's a very reasonable price if it doesn't go too much higher.
 
Well - my bid was way, way beaten - it just went for £817 - which is crazy. I'm going to try a Frenkenstein Revox A77 - there's a guy selling one in Northern Ireland who has a weird one. Says it is a mk2 but it has very odd meters and what looks like a few mk4 parts - but is two track and High Speed. We will see.
 
If it is a high speed Mk2 you need to check it very carefully. As far as I know there were no factory built high speed A77s made at that time so it will have been converted by a third party. The larger capstan diameter affects the head wrap on the A77 so the capstan motor has to be moved back to compensate. Some people just changed the capstan without moving the motor which means that the tape doesn't make good contact with the play head on these machines. The one on Ebay looks a right Frankenstein with meters from a completely different machine and the back is missing so they've just slapped on a piece of hardboard. It would probably be fine if it stays at the current price but I wouldn't pay much for it - especially as there are no pictures of the heads.
 
Yes - the speed control section has a sticker over the original in German? A bit of a Mk2/3/4. I put in just the bid you can see and that will be it! If it works for that pric e it's a win. The metering section is a real bodge!
 
How very depressing it is to have read this thread. However one's experience doesn't have to be this way.

I'm doing special piano tuning that's different to nearly everyone else and have been recording concerts with the tuning now for 18 years . . . And digital recordings last as long as . . . . someone doesn't throw out the next bit of computer as junk. Memory discs get smaller . . . . In contrast I picked up a whole archive of recordings of an organ on tape from the 1980s - until digital was adopted and the digital recordings have evaporated.

So I've been putting all my digital recordings onto tape. Last year at one concert I recorded both digital and analogue and whilst the reels were going round I knew that there was an analogue recording safe . . . whilst . . . with unexpected battery failure the digital recording failed.

was the result.

The secret is really in the value of buying a serviced machine. Don't bother with the merely "works" in ads but the Serviced. I go to both Stephen Bennett at Vintagetech.co.uk and Geoff Kramer at Servicesound for Ferrograph. Both are dedicated professionals.

Recorders should be recapped with all capacitors changed and transistors checked and changed where appropriate. There's no point spending a lot of money on a machine which hasn't had this attention.

Once one's got a recorder in good condition there's a lot of interest to be had buying old tapes on ebay and transcribing them. Some of these are intriguing such as 1986 news review
History of Hastings Railway
Oral histories
Top rate classical https://youtu.be/u1VjsmNZom4
Mystery event recording, choral https://youtu.be/jaT04nhXx5s
Arrangement of Bach D minor of which I was unaware https://youtu.be/eU4zZV_o8yU
A concert recorded wonderfully, perhaps at Oxford or Cambridge https://youtu.be/wpQGYeKMp0Y
Benjamn Britten suite for cello https://youtu.be/hKg-X9YobbM
Transcript from an original vinyl LP of brilliant quality https://youtu.be/qwnTES-FI9U
Theology of Luther - BBC recording and a pleasure to hear the recording quality of voice https://youtu.be/qJ_9FJNQD9k
Recollections of prisoners of the Japanese in the second world war https://youtu.be/XQL5K7Wgb2U - again a pleasure to hear good voice recording
Organ - https://youtu.be/0recmn65DJk

I hope perhaps that people might find some of the above as enjoyable as I've found them to be. Lots more in the pipeline.

The PR99 gives great access to heads for cleaning as does also the Ferrograph Super Seven and the TEAC 3440 and Tascam 34.

Many of the recordings above were transcribed from channels 1 and 4 of the TEAC, the TEAC and Tascam being versatile machines but a Revox A77 and Ferrograph giving access to 3 3/4ips.

I'll be thinning out my machines in due course and any machine I'll be putting on ebay will be "expensive" as I'll have had it serviced, had heads relapped or replaced as necessary and spent fortunes getting them better than when I acquired them. But with the capabilities of these machines to produce recordings that can last decades into the future, their worth is incomparable.

Geoff at Servicesound is now trying out new idlers for Ferrograph and indeed there was a period when the old idlers didn't go to goo and such are available economically on ebay. I don't think the capstan shafts of the Ferros are rubber covered - it's just the idlers and we're now into a period when the modern replacements are with much better understanding of the materials. Tascam Ninja is now producing replacement rubber tyres also, so the old problem seems to be in the past.

Greetings and best wishes,

David P
 
David Pinnegar said:
So I've been putting all my digital recordings onto tape. Last year at one concert I recorded both digital and analogue and whilst the reels were going round I knew that there was an analogue recording safe . . . whilst . . . with unexpected battery failure the digital recording failed.
Click to expand...
Safe forever?
Leaving a tape untouched for years allows the recording to deteriorate.
The data recorded will imprint itself on the adjacent tape layers.
You can reduce the effect by periodically spooling the tape forwards and backwards, to move the data around.
What is safe forever?
I think hard disks and flash memory sticks may well forget their data, given enough time.
 
Slouching Raymond said:
Safe forever?
Leaving a tape untouched for years allows the recording to deteriorate.
The data recorded will imprint itself on the adjacent tape layers.
You can reduce the effect by periodically spooling the tape forwards and backwards, to move the data around.
What is safe forever?
I think hard disks and flash memory sticks may well forget their data, given enough time.
Click to expand...
Good points Ray! Periodic spooling will reduce print but every pass will incrementally reduce HF and add a tiny bit of noise. Then there is "sticky tape syndrome"!
CD/DVD does not seem to be immune from deterioration but paradoxically THE worst medium, mechanical storage on vinyl does! Now, if data could be stored digitally but the bits 'cut' on a disc* that should last practically forever but of course you would need the means to play it to survive as well!

*Remember those daft RF four channel disc systems?
Dave.
 
I suppose you could put the spools on the wrong way, defeat the tape out sensors, and just spool from one to the other - that would reduce the print through, but not risk passing magnetised guides and the heads?
 
David Pinnegar said:
How very depressing it is to have read this thread. However one's experience doesn't have to be this way.

I'm doing special piano tuning that's different to nearly everyone else and have been recording concerts with the tuning now for 18 years . . . And digital recordings last as long as . . . . someone doesn't throw out the next bit of computer as junk. Memory discs get smaller . . . . In contrast I picked up a whole archive of recordings of an organ on tape from the 1980s - until digital was adopted and the digital recordings have evaporated.

So I've been putting all my digital recordings onto tape. Last year at one concert I recorded both digital and analogue and whilst the reels were going round I knew that there was an analogue recording safe . . . whilst . . . with unexpected battery failure the digital recording failed.
Click to expand...


David, I'm glad you got your recordings, but I simply can't agree with you on dumping digital files to tapes as a proper archive.

Everyone thought tape was permanent, until they pulled out that tape with sticky shed, which piled up on their tape paths, and your precious recording turned into a pile of goo on the record head. So you bake the tape, cross your fingers and hope you can get a single pass done cleanly to dub it to digital.

Anyone who only keeps one copy of something important on one device is inviting disaster. Once you have it in digital form, you can put exact copies in a hundred different places. Flash drives, hard drives, SSDs, phones, Google Drive, Youtube, Spotify, the cloud. As long as one survives, the work survives. They don't "evaporate". You can always make a hundred more copies. Send it to friends, and they can put it on their drives.

I have my dad's original 8mm film reels from 1956. My dad had them transferred to VHS many years ago. I later transferred those to digital. I have them on hard drives, DVDs, and gave copies to my siblings on flash drives and DVDs. When my cousin passed away, I put together a video for his kids, and sent it to them on their phone. Try to find a working 8mm film projector and screen today.

On the other hand, I had lots of 35mm slides that were in the basement when if flooded. They were all ruined by a foot of water. No backups.... My reels of tape were likewise ruined. They all went into the trash. My air check tapes, a recording of my sister's high school chorus, band recording... gone.

And your comment about being secure by having the tape reels spinning, and not worrying about a battery failure on your digital recorder... what do you do if the AC goes down? My Zoom recorders will run off AC. but with AA batteries as well, if the power goes out, the recording continues for a good 20 or 30 minutes. You can get a 10,000mAH 5v battery pack that would run a significantly longer length of time. Just unplug the AC and plug in the battery pack. Try running a Revox on a 5V battery pack!
 
Just a comment on the unequal temperament tuned piano - I found that the few live recitals I've been to sounded quite nice lower down, but made me squint a bit when it moved into the higher registered. The Schumann doesn't explore the high end very much so equally difficult to assess how the Revox would have managed the jangly upper harmonics? I have to say it did record well though - nice job.
 
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