Tape duplicator question

[lo.fi.love]

Hey folks,

I'm angry and scared! I think the duplicator I bought off eBay for $300 might be a big ol' boat anchor!

I haven't really used it much. It's the Kingdom One Touch ST. I attempted copying a cassette that I had copied from reel-to-reel, with the levels going as high as +3 (and sometimes peaking just slightly higher) in order to get above the hiss and to affect a little bit of saturation. The "dupe master" cassettes that I recorded from rtr sound OK.

But, when I run it through the duplicator and listen to one of the copies, it sounds like TOTAL crap. The program fades in and out fairly dramatically and you can really notice it in the hihat sound - ssshhSSSHHHssshhSSSHHH. It's in almost even intervals and the whole program "ducks" a bit... if it was ducking with each snare hit then it would seem indicative of bad mastering, but the cassettes copied in each "bay" on the duplicator sound different from the next.

I'm clueless here. I'm afraid that I'll have to throw this thing in the trash, but I want to see if anybody here has some suggestions. Is there anyone here who is familiar with high-speed tape duplicators? I'm fairly certain that this duplicator is a rebadged version of an OEM product, since it looks a lot like another product, the Recordex Sound Master... does anyone have experience with that particular duplicator?

I'm tempted to pony up for a Tascam T-3000, especially since it can handle CrO2 tape. The drawback is that I would be able to make only two copies at a time, and I plan on making batches of 200 copies of the cassettes that I'm working with. Ugh... oh well.

Help! Please!!!

 

[Tim Gillett]

I've worked with high speed tape duplicators for many years. There are definitely good and not so good ones. Like everything else you get what you pay for.

Used ones can have had a lot of hours on them and very worn heads. The playback tends to get weaker and weaker levels especially the highs.

It's possible to service the machines and get quite acceptable performance from them, though the copy will ALWAYS be a little worse than the original.
I used to get hundreds of these machines to service, but cant remember the last time somebody brought one to me.

Is there any reason you cant distribute in CD or some other digital format?

Cheers, Tim

 

[lo.fi.love]

Used ones can have had a lot of hours on them and very worn heads. The playback tends to get weaker and weaker levels especially the highs.

That's the thing - I think I was misled to believe that this machine had seen very little use. That's eBay for you... maybe the seller meant well but didn't know the full story behind the item he was selling. I knew something was going on when I plugged in the 4-unit expansion module and one of the decks didn't work. That, and the pinch rollers were absolutely filthy when I went to clean them. All of these issues seem symptomatic of poor maintenance and heavy wear.

Is there any reason you cant distribute in CD or some other digital format?

The idea is to produce and distribute a cassette-based audio fanzine. It's part of a larger desire of mine to bring music back to a tangible format, since most people my age (I'm 26) only buy digital music files (IF money is exchanged at all). Only my fellow 'record collector' friends go out and purchase music from record shops. I've received enough support and interest to make me believe that my idea/fanzine will catch on in a very limited niche market, and I'm OK with that. I'm targeting collectors and the music-obsessed.

Whether the above paragraph demonstrates that I'm out of touch with reality, or that I'm limiting myself by choosing a dying medium, is something that can be covered in another discussion. But, I'm slowly seeing the usefulness of going digital, at least for distribution. I wouldn't have to worry about tape duplicators breaking down, and I also wouldn't have to worry about cassettes getting crushed in the mail. And, my "price per unit" would be based on data transfer costs from my web hosting provider and not on cassettes, j-cards, Norelco cases, padded mailers and postage.

I don't know. I wanted the project/product to be an "experience" and not just something that you click at. I guess I'll start a thread later this week to discuss this particular issue.

In the meantime, I've already ordered about $400 worth of cassettes, mailers, and Norelco cases, so I guess I'll just use those until I run out, and maybe go digital after. I'm bidding on a T-3000 in good condition (so they say...) and I'll see about making high-speed dubs on my many cassette decks.

 

[jedblue]

I bought an old two bay Telex machine off eBay for ten bucks a month ago. I got hold of it and didn't expect much which was good because it was shite but I got stuck into it as best I could and now it's going okay. First up it would jam on the dupe tape and that was to do with the drive rollers not engaging properly which required a bit of dismantling to get at the rollers and cleaning them up. That fixed that. Next the recording quality was a shocker on all four tracks. It was all over the place and dull dull dull so I started on the heads with iso-alcohol then Goddards Silver polish and dressed them back until they looked as good as I was going to get them. There was no gap evident on the heads but they'd had a busy life so I was hopeful. Then a final dousing with iso alcohol to get rid of any remaining silver polish and a demag and things were better but still not good enough level wise. So I made a 1kHz 0db oscilator test tape via my Otari 5050 RTR's oscilator on my Akai GX95 cassette deck and used that to start to work on the reproduction and recorder level pots inside the duplicator. By trial and error, using the test tape to make dubs and playing them back in the Akai and watching the meters, I adjusted the master playback and dub record levels until I got it reproducing as close to the master as possible, accepting that there was going to be some quality loss caused by the duplication process. It's an old machine and there's no one in my neck of the woods who could service it anyway so it was do it myself or biff it. Now it's making quite good copies and I'm happy with it.

Jed

 

[Tim Gillett]

If the heads are OK and aligned, it's usually more important to check record bias levels rather than play and record level trim pots which dont normally go out.
Just boosting overall levels wont solve the muddy sound. It will just increase distortion and make the highs even more crushed.

Normally, adjusting record levels at 1khz is the last thing to do after having done the other adjustments. Also, be careful not to adjust master play levels unless you're absolutely sure they are out. With addon modules, it throws out the calibration. The master deck should be calibrated to a set level from a test tape. From then on, you only adjust record level trims on each slave deck to obtain the same levels as on the original tape.

High speed cassette copiers are nearly always "2 head" and so the only way to adjust bias levels is by repeated tweaks on record and play cycles. Another way used by techs is a special "3 head" cassette which is capable of replaying instantly the recorded signal and makes bias adjustment much easier. You can instantly see the effect of bias on a 1hkz signal's level. I constructed one using a cassette shell and a high speed play head. It made bias setup a lot easier.

Cheers Tim

 

[Tim Gillett]

If the heads are OK and aligned, it's usually more important to check record bias levels rather than play and record level trim pots which dont normally go out.
Just boosting overall levels wont solve the muddy sound. It will just increase distortion and make the highs even more crushed.
Bias has a much bigger effect on the highs (eg: 10khz) than 1khz and lower.

Normally, adjusting record levels at 1khz is the last thing to do after having done the other adjustments. Also, be careful not to adjust master play levels unless you're absolutely sure they are out. With decks designed for multiple slaves, it throws out the calibration. The master deck should be calibrated to a set level from a test tape. From then on, you only adjust record level trims on each slave deck to obtain the same levels as on the original tape.

High speed cassette copiers are nearly always "2 head" and so the only way to adjust bias levels is by repeated tweaks on record and play cycles. Another way used by techs is a special "3 head" cassette which is capable of replaying instantly the recorded signal "on the fly" and makes bias adjustment much easier. You can instantly see the effect of bias on a 1hkz signal's level. I constructed one using a a high speed play head in a modified cassette shell. It made bias setup a lot easier.

Cheers Tim

 

[stevieb]

...or that I'm limiting myself by choosing a dying medium...

Can't wait till the next discussion- you can't kill cockroaches. Oh, sure, you can kill one or a million, but they alway keep coming back.