pioneer rt-909 function? recording issue?

[illy willy]

Hey crew-

I'll be honest- my brother stumbled upon a 909, tried to sell it to a music shop, they couldn't figure it out, decided it was broken, so he gave it to me.

HA- It plays reels like a champ. Only problem is the record function doesn't seem to give me a bit of sound on the displays. And only an extremely faint bit of sound in the headphones. Is this a common problem?

My real goal is to record my personal music on it and ditch as much cpu time as I can. is the 909 made for this? Or it is basically a playback device? Anybody utilize one for home recording?

Hey any comments about this beautiful reel to reel would be hugely appreciated. thanks.

 

[jjones1700]

I've got 3 of them.

The 909 is a 4 track / 2 channel consumer deck. One of the neat things about this deck is that you can record on track at a time (if you decide to layer two tracks, or just to have two separate mono tracks of a program of sorts).

The odd thing about this model (why they designed it like this, I will never know) is that the meters are totally dependent upon the output knob. If you are recording and trying to set your levels, make sure you have the source ("Monitor") set to "TAPE". If you try to set your recording levels while set to "SOURCE", you will be chasing it all over the place with the input and output knobs. Also, while you are setting the levels in "TAPE" mode, you can also set the bias and EQ as well, since you will hear which setting sounds the best on the tape itself. One more thing, the "METER" button changes the weighting of the meter between peak and average. Play around with it and figure out which one is more comfortable for you to work with. My personal preference is to set the levels in averaging mode, and double check with the peak setting.

The 909 is a beautiful machine and has one of the best tape transport systems, other than maybe a 3M or Technics. The closed loop system is very gentle on tapes and have never had a tape snap as a result of the deck itself. Just make sure the back tension is set correctly for both sizes of reels and that the brakes are in good order.

The biggest weak point of the 909 model is it's capstan motor. It is almost always the first thing to go out in these machines. It's not that big of a deal to find one if it does go out, it's the same as a Tascam 38 capstan motor.

Ok, in short (now that I've rambled on too long) the 909 is a very capable stereo (or dual mono) deck. I don't know about multi-tracking onto it, but putting your music library onto tape with it is a no-brainer.