jedblue
beep beep beep beep beep
My recording buddy's wife was at their neighbour's garage sale. The neighbour said that there was some 'audio gear' that her now deceased husband owned that we might be interested in. $25 secured one of these...
A '72-73 Sony TC-850 in good condition.
After the deal was done, an elderly gentleman arrived at the sale and desperately wanted it. He wove an interesting story about having old tapes that his long gone father had made on one of these and how much he wanted to be able to play them. Discussions went on, offers of $250 or more were made. Pete stood his ground.The lady who sold it to us said a deal was a deal and she'd stick with the deal she'd already made. So Pete went home with the TC-850 and the elderly gent went home muttering.
So me and Pete arrange to go through the TC-850 with all my reference gear and I download a service manual from the net for it.
Upon closer investigation we reveal that it can play at 3 3/4, 7 1/2 & 15 ips, has half track record and half and four track playback and is a -10db RCA input output machine. Sound on sound and tape echo options as well. Sort of 'prosumer' I guess. It's a really nice machine. Although all covered in tape gunge, the heads clean up just fine and look great. One of the 10 1/2" nab hubs is incomplete and it appears that the right hand reel table has slipped down the motor shaft and is not aligned with the left hand one. Looking at the manual it appears that it is secured to the shaft with a couple of grub screws so it shouldn't be too hard to re-align. For the purpose of checking I just shim up the right hand reel with some reel table shims I've got and away she goes.
The manual reveals that it has it's own Sony reference tape with the main tone recorded at 400Hz and a whole bunch of other tones on it. No chance of finding one of those I suspect. And no identification of what the reference flux level is. And it is a 7 1/2" speed reference tape.
I put my 320 flux 1kHz 7 1/2" reference tape on and the meters fly off the scale. Without checking the input and output calibration and putting the voltmeter on the output and back calculating I don't know what the reference flux level actually is. No matter because adjusting the output pots back show that whatever it is, the left and right channels are in balance. Reading the manual also reveals another interesting point - there is no way to adjust the playback level for different flux levels. It appears to be factory fixed and unadjustable. Hmm, ah well, it's only $25 after all.
So we put some tones through and record some program material at 7 1/2 and 15 ips and all is good. All we need to do is dismantle it back to the reel table grub screws and align the reel tables up, re-assemble, do a bias, recording level and output calibration and she's all good to go.
Anyway, as we are doing this, who should show up but the elderly gentleman? He's got the studio address from Pete's wife. Away he goes again with the story. By this time we're sure that the TC-850 is a real score. And it's quite rare it seems. Then the elderly gent reveals that he has a couple of Otari's that are in "great condition" but they "can't play his father's tapes". He's got an MX-50 and an MX-55. He offers to bring them in so we can check them out and maybe we can do a deal? So, fine by us, bring them in.
A few days later he arrives with these machines.
We look at the MX-55 first. It is, as he said, immaculate. I check the heads, run the reference tapes through it, record some tones and some program material and it is all good. It is a far more capable machine than the TC-850 and requires no maintenance. We don't even bother to check the MX-50. If a deal is to be done, it'll be around the TC-850 and the MX-55
Two minutes later, the elderly gent leaves with a Sony TC-850 that still requires a bit of work and we have an immaculate Otari MX-55. Straight swap. You could see that he was a, uhm, er, a bit dissappointed with his end of the deal and was obviously hoping for a bit more for the MX-55. He said he paid $850 for it.
Never mind mate, you've got hold of quite a rare machine that can play your father's tapes (once you've sorted out the reel table alignment and sort out the nab hub) and you've got rid of a machine that you can't use. We've got another good pro half track machine that's ideal for our requirements.
I'd call that win win.
Now I can return the PR99 back home, have the MX-55 at the studio attached to the either Studer or the Tascam desks for recording duties and master tape to tape in stereo at home on my existing two half track machines (or half track to full track on the Nagra).
Yippeeee
A '72-73 Sony TC-850 in good condition.
After the deal was done, an elderly gentleman arrived at the sale and desperately wanted it. He wove an interesting story about having old tapes that his long gone father had made on one of these and how much he wanted to be able to play them. Discussions went on, offers of $250 or more were made. Pete stood his ground.The lady who sold it to us said a deal was a deal and she'd stick with the deal she'd already made. So Pete went home with the TC-850 and the elderly gent went home muttering.
So me and Pete arrange to go through the TC-850 with all my reference gear and I download a service manual from the net for it.
Upon closer investigation we reveal that it can play at 3 3/4, 7 1/2 & 15 ips, has half track record and half and four track playback and is a -10db RCA input output machine. Sound on sound and tape echo options as well. Sort of 'prosumer' I guess. It's a really nice machine. Although all covered in tape gunge, the heads clean up just fine and look great. One of the 10 1/2" nab hubs is incomplete and it appears that the right hand reel table has slipped down the motor shaft and is not aligned with the left hand one. Looking at the manual it appears that it is secured to the shaft with a couple of grub screws so it shouldn't be too hard to re-align. For the purpose of checking I just shim up the right hand reel with some reel table shims I've got and away she goes.
The manual reveals that it has it's own Sony reference tape with the main tone recorded at 400Hz and a whole bunch of other tones on it. No chance of finding one of those I suspect. And no identification of what the reference flux level is. And it is a 7 1/2" speed reference tape.
I put my 320 flux 1kHz 7 1/2" reference tape on and the meters fly off the scale. Without checking the input and output calibration and putting the voltmeter on the output and back calculating I don't know what the reference flux level actually is. No matter because adjusting the output pots back show that whatever it is, the left and right channels are in balance. Reading the manual also reveals another interesting point - there is no way to adjust the playback level for different flux levels. It appears to be factory fixed and unadjustable. Hmm, ah well, it's only $25 after all.
So we put some tones through and record some program material at 7 1/2 and 15 ips and all is good. All we need to do is dismantle it back to the reel table grub screws and align the reel tables up, re-assemble, do a bias, recording level and output calibration and she's all good to go.
Anyway, as we are doing this, who should show up but the elderly gentleman? He's got the studio address from Pete's wife. Away he goes again with the story. By this time we're sure that the TC-850 is a real score. And it's quite rare it seems. Then the elderly gent reveals that he has a couple of Otari's that are in "great condition" but they "can't play his father's tapes". He's got an MX-50 and an MX-55. He offers to bring them in so we can check them out and maybe we can do a deal? So, fine by us, bring them in.
A few days later he arrives with these machines.
We look at the MX-55 first. It is, as he said, immaculate. I check the heads, run the reference tapes through it, record some tones and some program material and it is all good. It is a far more capable machine than the TC-850 and requires no maintenance. We don't even bother to check the MX-50. If a deal is to be done, it'll be around the TC-850 and the MX-55
Two minutes later, the elderly gent leaves with a Sony TC-850 that still requires a bit of work and we have an immaculate Otari MX-55. Straight swap. You could see that he was a, uhm, er, a bit dissappointed with his end of the deal and was obviously hoping for a bit more for the MX-55. He said he paid $850 for it.
Never mind mate, you've got hold of quite a rare machine that can play your father's tapes (once you've sorted out the reel table alignment and sort out the nab hub) and you've got rid of a machine that you can't use. We've got another good pro half track machine that's ideal for our requirements.
I'd call that win win.
Now I can return the PR99 back home, have the MX-55 at the studio attached to the either Studer or the Tascam desks for recording duties and master tape to tape in stereo at home on my existing two half track machines (or half track to full track on the Nagra).
Yippeeee
