Reel to Reel players and other older equipment

Since my mother has moving out of her house and into a much smaller place it has come time to deal with lots of stuff some of it is my father's (who passed away quite some time ago) stereo equipment. The stuff is not high end audiophile stuff but decent stuff like Marantz, JVC, AKai all from late 70's.

One thing is the Reel to Reel player it is an Akai (dont know the model #) it dosent take the big reels only the ~7"? ones. Is it worth dealing with how is the sound of the prerecorded reel tapes? The thing is big and I know what my wife will say.

right now I dont have model numbers for the other stuff I will do some research when I go there but right now Im just wondering what is worth persueing. The cassette is a Marantz, I'll grab the turntable (JvC directdrive) as I do want to get back into vinyl and Im not set up. As for speakers there were three sets two sets Ultralinear and one Fisher. We even have the very first Denon cd player where the discs sit vertical.

Any thoughts on any of the stuff would be great. I realise one cant say much with no model #'s though.

 

For the reel tapes: IMHO prerecorded tapes do not sound all that good. I have a couple dozen, and they all suffer from a roll-off. They, like all mass-produced tapes, were all high-speed duplicated (the highs don't extend very far, and there is a lot of tape hiss), and depending on who owned a tape and how it was stored, it could be brittle. (I had to throw away a "Whipped Cream" reel because it was brittle to the point of being unplayable.) I've ended up selling a couple of reels since the sound wasn't what some of my collector buddies made them out to be. ("Oh, they make great CDs!" Yeah, maybe if they're deaf above 12kHz.)

The Akai is probably a decent deck though.

That Denon CD player may not even work: I have the identical Hitachi player. It looks cool when it's all lit up, but mine hasn't played a disc since the mid 80s.

 

I beg to differ pre-recorded tapes can sound amazing especially 2-track with one caveat you have to have the right equipment, you got to remember that "most" consumer decks that were made around 15-20 years, there amplifing sections were made of low cost mid fi parts, now if you play vinyl on a comparable quality turntable it will sound as bad or worse, you really have to hear some of the good tapes on top end decks some really sound exceptional.

 

About 6 months ago the Denon might get through a whole cd if you were lucky it kind of looks cool I agree but nothing I want to bother with these days. (I wish the turntable was a Denon)

 

The Reel to reel tapes from the 60s are for the most part, total junk. They are hissy beyond belief, are rolled off at about 12K as previously stated, and are fragile as hell.

Any good condition Lp will be WAY better sounding, easier to deal with and will last far longer.

The 60s reel to reels were all generally made from a "bin loop" master, and duplicated at super high speeds which was good for efficiency but bad for fidelity. On top of all that, the record companies usually created a sub master off the production master, so that by the time the tape got to the consumer it was 7th or 8th generation. UUGGHHHH.

 

People in my age group probably cannot hear about 12khz anyway. One advantage of the tapes is you get the original mix (instead of the CD mix), the original songs, and no pops/ticks... and the hiss varies. The only tapes with objectionable hiss are 3 3/4 ips tapes, which need to be avoided. As for dried out tapes, just check the condition of the box. If its soiled with some odd looking "stains" then you can be pretty sure the tape is no good either. I would guess tapes in that condition were stored in a garage, or maybe even outdoors in a shed. Sure there's no hiss in CDs, but that's because of "no-noise" filtering which affects the music also.

 

I have been the owner of Reel tape machines since 1966 and Mikey is absolutely correct!

Conversely speaking, I recorded Steve mastered CD's to professional quality Reel tape [Quantegy or EMTEC] with superlative results...

Bob

 

Come again?

As a blanket statement, this is both false and irrelevant to the thread topic. Maybe you meant something else?

 

I have a very High end vinyl system and a lot of times if you compare the tape release with the vinyl release from the same era the tape is equal or better, the 2-tracks from the 50's are in another league altogether for me the best playback today is the recent vinyl reissues from Classic etc., and open reel tape, mind you I'm playing the tapes back on a Nagra or Stellavox decks.

 

I have found pre recorded reel to reel tapes to be excelent. Columbia Masterworks and London tapes seem to sound the best.

Also, the quality of recordings you can make on a reel to reel deck is fantastic. In addition to using them in my recording studio, I use them in my everyday music listning. I buy audiophile vinyl, or CD's and record them onto reel to reel tape (I prefer Emtec SM911 tape). Then, I can enjoy the fedility of the recording, without having to handle the discs. I use a Teac 3300SX to do this.

 

Joe,

Is there a reason why you prefer EMTEC SM911 to SM900? Just curious. Also, I now have problems even locating EMTEC tape stock. Do you have a good source? On my last tape order, I purchased Quantegy GP9. To date, I am very pleased with the Quantegy but, I still have a loyalty to EMTEC...

Thanks,

Bob

 

Emtec 911 is my favorite tape in current production. I use it in my studio for everything. The lows are controlled and accurate, the midrange is silky smooth, and the high frequency's are clear, yet refined, and not too bright. I find that 900 seems to get a bit too bright for me, and the bass seems to be rolled off a bit. I get my Emtec tape from Jeff Williams at Tape Services. 1-518-382-2624. He is a very nice man, and is very knowledgeable about Emtec. give him a call, Tell him Joe Nino-Hernes sent you, he will get a kick out of that!

As for Quantegy products, I never liked them. I like GP9, but it is inconsistent from batch to batch. Some will be fine, and some will shed like mad, same with 456. 406 and 407 seem to be ok, but not great.

 

Thanks Joe - much appreciated!

Bob

 

Exactly. Prerecorded reels, remember, were in production before the first cassettes...and those first cassettes were mass-duplicated the same way, sounding quite bad. I don't know at what speed the reels were duplicated at, but given the primitive duplicating equipment back then (compared to what we could do today), there just isn't a good high end on those tapes. AND, you also have to figure that the mass-production tape stock used certainly wasn't the same high quality tape used by studios or even by serious home recordists. I'd love to see a spectral analysis of a few dozen pre-recorded tapes myself. I'd like to know what I'm hearing...or not hearing.

I do know that sound quality very much depended on the tape the record label provided to the duplicating plant. I have probably at least a dozen tapes from Ampex's Elk Grove Village duplicating plant: the A&M's are all s**t, the Verves are quite good (still not CD quality though), and the one Fantasy I own is a little better than halfway between the two. And I even bought some of these sealed!

I had (past tense) enough of a cross-section of tapes to know. And I can't blame it on my decks either. If I record a CD onto a decent grade of tape, the tape is very close to the disc. I mainly use my deck to record tapes to the computer for putting on CD, for albums that haven't been released on CD yet. Unfortunately, some of these tapes sound so "blah", I don't even bother wasting a 25 cent blank CD on them. I've gotten much better results finding clean or sealed vinyl and dubbing those instead.

Just relating my own experiences.

 

Or in an attic, or basement. Ever get some that smell mildewy? I can relate to the dried-out tape: that copy of the TJB's "Whipped Cream" I threw away had a cover that was sun-bleached in spots. The tape was almost falling apart in my hands! I actually kept the cover and the reel--the actual tape is gone, but I'm going to record it new from CD, just to have it again.

 

Agreed. The quality of the tape stock of the 60s pre-recorded reels was pitiful.
Serious home recordists used much better tape.

And so much of that stuff is 3 3/4 ips which is just about useless. I tossed all my old 3 3/4 reels when cds came out. Even those early crappy Cds were better sounding than those reels.

 

I never bought any 3-3/4 ips tapes--I figured they had to be quite a bit worse. Even homemade tapes at that speed sounded sad. Especially on my Sony deck, which changed the EQ substantially to attempt to brighten it up.

The only bright spot is that I can unload some of these reels on eBay for a nice sum.

 

If you can find Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk," it is a 3 3/4 reel that is amazing in sound quality. Not better than the LP, but your hear things you don't get on the record.

 

Also, Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland," 7 1/2 ips on two reels, blows away the LP. Make sure you get the two volume version. Hard to find but aaaaamazing!

 

From what I have heard from other people the poular releases were much more inferior than the classical, I'm into classical so maybe this is where the discrepency is

 

Bob,

If memory serves me correctly, years ago, there were more audiophile releases such as Classical and Jazz titles and then there were mass-produced popular title releases. The manufacturing standards may have been different. All I ever had were popular releases. A couple sounded pretty nice but the rest were awful...

Bob