TEAC a 3340s

[rickb]

Hi, I had my teac 3340's rebiased so that the repro head was equal to the record head in sync mode. Don't ask me how to do this? I wouldn't venture a guess. I had a a teac repair guy,(Japanese fellow) do it here in Atlanta. All i can say is it made things better!

I'd love to know how he did it.

Me too. My experience with the 3340s was the sync mode was much lower fidelity...this was inherient in the design of the electroincs at the time per my understanding. That is, sync reproduced a lower quality signal but enough to monitor from while laying down addtional tracks. I would think the repro head should produce the highest quality reproduction vs. matching the sound quality in sync. On the other hand, on my Tascam 38, the technology changed dramatically so the sound quality was equal wether in sync or repro mode. I read several threads on here that many 38 users mix down in sync to reduce/minimize tracking errors from the record/sync head to the repro head. I rarely use the repro head on my 38 and perhps I'm mistaken or confused on this regarding the 38?? Regardless, I don't think the Teac 3340s sync mode can give the same fidelity as repro mode, unless you degrade the quality of the repro mode. Could be much mistaken though!

 

[sweetbeats]

Yes...basically the main purpose and advantage to the repro head on machines that have identical sync and rero performance (like the 38) is for being able to set the bias on the fly. Otherwise there is little reason to use it during mixdown.

On a deck like the 3340 re-biasing will not do anything to change the sync response potential, so there must have been an upgrade in electronics.

Like rickb said, the limitations on those older decks were not related to how the operator set them up, but rather the electronics and head design.