Ampex 601-2

I have an Ampex 601-2 I have owned for several years. This spring I shipped the unit to John Warmack (ex-Ampex tech) for a good going over, and have been really enjoying it ever since. The sound that comes out of this 2 track machine is like "buttah" very nice smooth mid-range, and gain for days! I've taken some digital multi-tracks a buddy of mine made of our band, that sounded pretty thin and digital sounding, and bumped them down to stereo on this machine, and I have to say they now sound pretty good. Wish I could talk him into using it as our main recorder, but then we'd have to make it all the way through a song without a mistake!

Who else uses vintage recording gear? I'd love to know what you're using. My next aquisition will hopefully be a tube mixer like an Ampex MX-30 or something with more mic inputs.

 

I think you've come to the right forum, bro. There's quite a few of us here who are crazy about vintage recording gear...including Steve himself. I've got some Ampex stuff sitting around...some 601 pres, a deck, etc. I've also got an old Gates tube limiter that I'm going to be selling any day now. Other than that....there's a few other odds and ends in my studio. For example, I've got two monitoring systems...one is modern and it consists of powered Event 20/20s and the other is vintage: a hot-rodded/modified 7868 juke-box power amp through a pair of Tannoy Cantata Monitor Golds. I have wanted to run tape, but my decks are digital. At the time when I made the decision to purchase, I was more interested in convenience than sound quality....but I've been able to fine tune things with tube pres and vintage mics. It's still not tape, though. Oh well.

 

I owned an Ampex 351 stereo reel to reel deck for a long time. I made many tapes on this machine. Tapes made from Lps sounded just great on that deck.

I finally sold it because it did NOT like todays Ampex tape, and it was WAY too rough on it. It ate one too many reels. Ruined more than one irreplacebale taoe. I finally said, enough.

I guess the old polyester tapes of the 50s and 60s were much more durable.

 

Also, as the transport of the 351 ages, it gets much rougher with tape.