I'd suggest if you really want a good tape deck without spending a fortune, look into anything from Otari (Amazing machines if you can find one in good shape, I adore mine), Tascam, Revox, etc. It takes a lot of work to get one in both working order and also into proper alignment. Drive belts can be picked up for peanuts, and a bored Sunday afternoon of cleaning it and installing new drive belt results in a perfectly working tapedeck. If these are like mushy crap, expect the machine not to play. The biggest hurdle is that tape machines have a significant learning curve, and require you to be both handy and at least somewhat capable of basic electronic alignment procedures. Sony TC-U2 cassette deck showing drive belts. Consumer machines aren't really ideal, though you can get some fun lo-fi stuff with them (I love my Akai GX-630D). I use RMGI SM911 (and will be trying SM900 soon) and the stuff is great.Įverything else you said is spot on though. 1/4" tape is reasonably priced if you really want tape sound on a budget and want a pro machine. RMGI and ATR Magnetics both manufacture new tape right now. I'd agree with the majority of what you said except (6). Perfectly valid as a hobby and an artistic endeavor, but in this case, this man wants to use it to create sound-art, and I think his money could be better used in other ways. Analog recording and its equipment is now a specialty niche market, populated by the same type of people that restore antique cars. I have the monster machine mentioned above. Now, before other flame me to oblivion for hating analog Not so! I have 3 turntables, one of which is modified to play 78-rpm records, and another to play 16" transcriptions. You can get a desktop multitrack-to-hard-disk for a very reasonable price from nearly any musician store. Personally, unless you have pre-existing tapes to play, I would avoid tape altogether. But, I bought mine to play old family reel recordings, not to do new work. But, even then I had to fix it fortunately I was a service tech when I was younger so I had the needed skill-set. BUT you can get retired broadcast-grade machines (with no belts, etc to give you trouble) for a hundred or two (I bought a 80-pound monster for $100 plus $60 shipping). NOW, having done all I can to discourage you, if you get it for 10 bucks, it might be worth tinkering with. (7) by the nature of your questions, I doubt you have the skills to fix this thing or keep it running (sorry for any offense). (5) The switches are going to be corroded. (4) That was a consumer grade machine anyway certainly not as capable as even the cheapest cassette based machine you can get. (2) The transport is most likely belts and rubber tires, all of which are going to be crumbly by now (3) The take up reel clutches are going to be shot. (1) It cannot do multitrack recording (you can't play one track and record to another). Given what you have said, I would pass on this machine.
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