Great stuff. You are a man after my own heart.
I love recycling stuff. Its very rewarding and its nice that another item doesn't end up in landfills.
i noticed a fostex R8 . So prior to your recent purchase attempts, you've owned one. What happened to that one?
It's worse than that. I've owned ... let me see .... including the current one (damaged in shipping) ... it's been 6 multi-track ATRs in the past: Two Tascam 38s, a Tasc the Fostex R8, and two Fostex 80s.
I bought the first Tascam 38 back in 97 or so when they were dirt cheap. I drove from Dallas to Lafayette to get it (pretty sure I found that on Harmonycentral.com back then). To be honest, I can't remember whether I even got to try that out. I don't know if I ever bought tape for it. I know it at least played because the guy played me a tape when I bought it from him. For some reason, I sold the machine.
I bought the second one in early 2000s off ebay I think, but it turned out to have a misaligned reel (like my current Fostex). Come to think of it, that may have been damaged in shipping too. I think I sat on it for too long though before trying it out, so I wasn't able to contact the seller or file a claim. I sold that locally (disclosing the damage, of course).
The TSR 8 was probably a year after that on ebay as well. When it arrived, I quickly tested it (I had tape ready to go), and it was awful. The heads (that "looked great" according to the auction) were in awful shape, and it would barely record any signal on tracks 1 or 2 even after a thorough cleaning. I returned it.
By that point, the analog resurgence had taken hold, and prices were starting to soar. So I let the R2R dream die for a while, sticking to cassette 4 tracks for my analog fix. I was also using various standalone digital recorders, including Roland VS 880, Yamaha AW16G, etc.
Finally, about three years ago, I decided to try the R2R dream again, so I got the Fostex R8. When I got it, I ran a test, recording some spoken voice tests on all the tracks. Everything seemed to work great, so I thought I'd found a winner. However, when I tried to record music on it, I noticed that it was not playing back at full speed. This wasn't obvious with just spoken word, but it was pretty obvious with music. I eventually realized that it wouldn't even make it through an entire reel during FF. It would start off strong, but it would putter out and eventually stop around 3/4 of the way through. Again, it was too late to get a refund on eBay. After trying to fix it myself, I ended up selling it for parts or repair on ebay. The good news was that, even doing that, I almost got back what I paid for it.
And that brings us up to date with the last two Fostex machines.
My wife thinks I'm just crazy at this point. She keeps telling me, "I
really think the universe is trying to tell you something!"
But I just tell her, "I just want a damned multi-track R2R! Lots of other people have working ones! Why can't I????"
I won't lie. It's been incredibly frustrating for sure. And I've come close to giving up the dream several times. I've made a decision that this Fostex 80 would be the last one I buy off eBay. I'm hoping that I can get this one repaired and file a claim with USPS to pay for it (they should, because it was totally insured). But it that can't happen for whatever reason and I have to return this one, from now on I'm sticking to local machines on CL that I can fully test myself before buying
and avoid shipping.
