Otari 1/2" 4-tracks... avoid or buy?

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Igor Alexander

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Hello all.

I recently bought a few 2-track open reel tape recorders and while I was there, noticed that the guy was also selling a pair of Otari MTR12-mk2 1/2" 4-tracks. These are extremely heavy, professional machines on rollaround stands.

The guy got them from an educational establishment that threw them out and he doesn't seem to know anything about them.

He didn't have a reel of 1/2" tape to test them, so I did a quick visual inspection.

While passing over the heads with a flashlight, I noticed that the erase heads on one had some noticeable damage (they might've been shot) and the record headstack on the other had a slight nick.

I take it scratched heads are a definite no-no, since they will abrade the tape. Is a scratched headstack ready for the garbage, or can it be repaired by having it "relapped"?

What is involved with replacing the heads on professional machines such as these? I noticed screws arranged in a rectangle around the head area of the machine; can the entire "head assembly" be removed and sent in? If so, when the assembly is returned and put back on the machine, is it necessary for a technician to have access to the entire machine in order to do a physical alignment? Should that be the case, it would be big factor against owning one of these machines, since they are way too heavy and bulky to be economically transported anywhere, and I don't know that any of the rare technicians around here that still do analog will make housecalls.

I think these machines would be fun to have in my home studio, provided they work and aren't going to be a money pit.

The guy is asking for $400 each, which to me seems quite high for untested machines of no particular repute in a track configuration that no one cares about in a world where analog is practically dead.

Whaddya think -- should I pass on these machines at the prices he's asking, or should I move on to the next stage and buy a 1/2" reel of tape (at $90+) to try them out?
 
Head relapping is expensive. Do you have the money it might take to get the deck back into shape. RMG is about 70.00 par reel or you can get a pancake for less. http://www.jrfmagnetics.com/ is the place to go for head info.
 
Heads can only be re-lapped when there's enough head gap left to do that. If the heads are badly worn down from heavy use, odds of a successful re-lap are not very favorable.

If it is possible, a job like that with a fresh recalibration afterward could cost 2 or 3 times the asking price of the deck.

Cheers! :)
 
The Ghost of FM said:
Heads can only be re-lapped when there's enough head gap left to do that. If the heads are badly worn down from heavy use, odds of a successful re-lap are not very favorable.

If it is possible, a job like that with a fresh recalibration afterward could cost 2 or 3 times the asking price of the deck.
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Considering I paid $500 for a used Fostex cassette portastudio back in '94, $1200 in today's worthless currency for an up-to-spec professional reel-to-reel isn't that hard to justify (at least if you love tape). It's not so much the price that fazes me as the potential time and effort required.

If getting the heads replaced or relapped is going to require having to ship the whole machine somewhere, then transporting it again to a tech to do a physical alignment, with the potential for damage along the way, then it's not worth the hassle to me, especially given that most of that money is going into transportation costs rather than in the actual work.

I've never dealt with a machine like this so I don't know what to expect. I was hoping someone who has worked with such machines could tell me.
 
Igor you're quite the investigator. You even bring a flash light with you. :D

Yes you can definitely send just the heads off or the head stack to have it relapped. I've done it. I used Magnetic Reference Lab in California. You can call John there and he can pretty much tell you how much it'd cost.

I think a 4 track Otari is worth that asking price. But there is no way for me to know what is involved or how much it would cost to get it going. I'd ask for less because like you said they are untested.
 
I sincerely question your sources regarding RMGI tape shedding. No offense or disrespect to your them meant, but until I hear some more detail I'm a skeptic.

Without knowing the functional state or something more about the heads I wouldn't get one for that price...

If you send the whole headstack in to be checked, lapped and aligned then you should be able to drop it on the deck and be ready for electronic alignment.

If the heads look suspicious I'd be staying away unless you need the rest of the machine for parts.

EDIT

But outside of the thoughts/concerns with the deck you looked at, Otari is top-notch. Good stuff. PArts are not as available as Tascam (for instance) and are likely to be more expensive, but you're not going to find a 1/2 inch 4-track in a Tascam except for the ATR60-4HS (rare...not cheap) or the 70-4 (not really a good idea, AND rare...), so...FWIW.
 
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sweetbeats said:
I sincerely question your sources regarding RMGI tape shedding. No offense or disrespect to your them meant, but until I hear some more detail I'm a skeptic.
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Source: Steve Albini's Electrical Audio.

http://www.electrical.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35387

We are using ATR for the 2" because it doesn't shit on the heads like RMGI has for us, and we trust them.
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I have to say I am thrilled we never had to try to use more than a few rolls of RMG. Virtually all of my experiences with RMG gave me the opinion that the company was neither capable of making reliable tape nor particularly concerned that most of what they sent out was useless. Replacing bad reels is a meaningless formality when the time spent discovering that it is bad is worth a multiple of the tape cost, and the possibility that someone's life's work has been compromised is there with every reel.

Unless out of pure caught-in-the-wilderness desperation, I don't expect to ever use this tape on another session.
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http://www.electrical.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=41647&start=28

On several reels of 900 1/4-inch, there was so much adhesive residue on the heads after a short playback that the heads literally had to be cleaned for a single playback of a song. I would have stopped the session and used something else, but we were out in the middle of nowhere and that's all we had. This implies terrible binder chemistry and/or curing.

On another 900 1/4-inch session almost a year later, the tape sensitivity and frequency response changed radically from the beginning to the end of a reel. The tape at the end of the reel was 1dB more sensitive and hand 3 dB less HF response relative to the tones at the head of the reel. This implies very poor coating control.

We have had some combination of these effects on 2-inch samples -- irregular response, poor consistency and unstable coating. I don't recall having a single RMGI session that didn't have one or the other of these problems over the course of several years.

I came to the conclusion that RMGI was perfectly willing to sell an unusable product. I am unwilling to continue giving them the benefit of any lingering doubt while there is a more reliable option.
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There are very, very few people in the recording business whose statements concerning such matters I would accept at face value; Steve Albini is one of them.
 
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Igor Alexander said:
There are very, very few people in the recording business whose statements concerning such matters I would accept at face value; Steve Albini is one of them.
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If it was so for me, then I would not bother asking any questions or asking for an "opinion" concerning matters on this board. ...well, unless somehow by a swing of my magic flashlight I've figured that Steve Albini is posting here under cover of a source undetectable "username".

Well, it's not so for me. Thanks God. ...and so I bother. ;)
 
FWIW... Otari machines for me have been more difficult than some others to troubleshoot. Very complex machines. I bailed on my MTR-10 after a few weeks of frustration. They may be great machines, but you have to consider the long haul...are they servicable and are parts available? The sheer size and weight is also a negative for me.

Just my opinion
 
I think you could make a mistake using a flashlight, you might see a "gap" and think the head is ruined, but really thats just the "gap". I think.

Otaris are very good machines,
Ive never used this one.
you might want to just surf around the web and see what else is available before jumping in to this one.

I am interested in the head stack question...usually do these headstacks go right back into the same spot?
 
The entire headblock on a machine like this is attached with nothing more than several fasteners and typically the heads are on plug in connectors, or in some cases the block has a PCB in it that plugs into a card slot on the transport and yes, at least machines that are setup that way that I've experienced they go back in the same spot. My Ampex machines have dowel pins or some such thing to locate the block.

Igor Alexander, I'm sure your sources all had a bad experience...I bet it all happened around the time of the few batches that were sold when RMGI moved to the Netherlands. They were unprepared for the climatic changes and how they would effect the binder formula. Is that okay? Well, I'd like to think they'd have that figured out ahead of time but they didn't. I have worked directly with them on a bad reel I got and it was replaced free of charge and quickly. It was from one of those early batches and there were only about 3. No tape manufacturer has been without blemish. AFAIK RMGI tape has been very solid since those early batches YEARS ago.
 
sweetbeats said:
Igor Alexander, I'm sure your sources all had a bad experience...I bet it all happened around the time of the few batches that were sold when RMGI moved to the Netherlands. They were unprepared for the climatic changes and how they would effect the binder formula. Is that okay? Well, I'd like to think they'd have that figured out ahead of time but they didn't. I have worked directly with them on a bad reel I got and it was replaced free of charge and quickly. It was from one of those early batches and there were only about 3. No tape manufacturer has been without blemish. AFAIK RMGI tape has been very solid since those early batches YEARS ago.
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People have been complaining about these sorts of problems as recently as this year.

As a consumer, I have two choices if I want new tape: ATR or RMGI. Am I going to go with a brand that is slightly cheaper but has a history of problems, or am I going to go with the one that I've heard almost no complaints about? It's a no-brainer. Maybe RMGI have gotten it together, but why would I take the chance when I can just as easily get a product that hasn't had these problems?

It's great that RMGI replaces problem reels, but that doesn't compensate me for lost time, lost productivity, return shipping, etc. Better to avoid a potentially unreliable product in the first place than to count on returning it if there's a problem. Besides, why would I want a replacement if the product isn't reliable?
 
Igor Alexander said:
As a consumer, I have two choices if I want new tape: ATR or RMGI. Am I going to go with a brand that is slightly cheaper but has a history of problems, or am I going to go with the one that I've heard almost no complaints about? It's a no-brainer. Maybe RMGI have gotten it together, but why would I take the chance when I can just as easily get a product that hasn't had these problems?
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Depends how much you have to pay. A single 1/2" roll of ATR would cost me $150 from Stanley, who appear to be the sole distributor in this country.
RMGI would be $78. Then we have the ATR stuff being too thick for most normal machines (not studio workhorse) to handle properly.
 
FALKEN said:
I think you could make a mistake using a flashlight, you might see a "gap" and think the head is ruined, but really thats just the "gap". I think.
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What I saw on the record head of one machine wasn't a "gap"; it was definitely a scratch! And one that I wouldn't have spotted if I hadn't brought a flashlight.

As for the erase head on the other machine, all I can say is that it didn't look like the erase head on the first, and what I saw didn't look like it should be part of a healthy headstack.
 
jpmorris said:
Depends how much you have to pay. A single 1/2" roll of ATR would cost me $150 from Stanley, who appear to be the sole distributor in this country.
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A 1/2" reel of ATR doesn't cost $150. I can get one for $105 Canadian.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of a 1" reel?

jpmorris said:
RMGI would be $78. Then we have the ATR stuff being too thick for most normal machines (not studio workhorse) to handle properly.
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What's a "normal machine"?

If your machine can't handle it, then it can't handle it, and you don't have a choice. But I'd be very surprised if the machines under discussion in this thread couldn't handle ATR tape.
 
technoplayer said:
FWIW... Otari machines for me have been more difficult than some others to troubleshoot. Very complex machines. I bailed on my MTR-10 after a few weeks of frustration. They may be great machines, but you have to consider the long haul...are they servicable and are parts available? The sheer size and weight is also a negative for me.
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To satisfy my curiousity, I'm going to find out how much it would cost to replace the heads on one of these, but I'm already starting to feel that it's not worth the hassle. A hundred bucks for a reel just to test the things; probably another $150 for a moving service if I buy them; god knows how much for head replacement or a relap; $300 for an alignment tape; having to track down parts (though having two identical machines certainly helps in that regard); etc.

I think I'm gonna pass unless he's willing to let them go for a lot less than he's asking.
 
Igor Alexander said:
A 1/2" reel of ATR doesn't cost $150. I can get one for $105 Canadian.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of a 1" reel?
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Entirely sure. 1" reels are $261.
http://www.stanleysonline.co.uk/product-1817.htm

For comparison:
http://www.studiospares.com/Magnetic-Tape/RMGI-SM911-12-Inch-Tape/invt/119010

To get the figures I've given, add VAT to the base price at 17.5% (strictly it's 15%, but only for a few more days IIRC). Current exchange rate is 1.62 dollars to the pound.
And no, neither company stocks both so a direct apples-to-apples comparison isn't available. However, Studiospares are average price for RMGI tape stock.

What's a "normal machine"?
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Consumer or semi-pro machines. Certainly anything that's specced for 1mil tape (Fostex R8, TASCAM 388). I honestly don't know about the Revox machines or TSR-8, but I'm pretty sure they're specced for 1.5 mil. 2.0 is liable to stress them IMHO.

If your machine can't handle it, then it can't handle it, and you don't have a choice. But I'd be very surprised if the machines under discussion in this thread couldn't handle ATR tape.
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Those Otaris probably can. A Studer 807 might. But ATR tape isn't a panacea, that's all I'm saying.
 
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