[sdiy] cheap and decent reel to reel recommendations?

[Richard Wentk]

At 20:50 10/09/2003 -0700, denshi wrote:
>any veterans of tape splicing/musique concrete have
>recommendations for a decent and affordable reel to
>reel machine?  i would like to explore some of the
>tape techniques that i take for granted on computers.

Studer and Revox are good, but also high maintenance. Bear in mind that all 
used machines will suffer from mechanical wear (i.e. sloppy tape drive 
mechanics leading to wow and flutter) and also more seriously from tape 
head issues like wear, misalignment, and so on. It's possible to lap a tape 
head to renew it, but this is an expensive thing to get into. Also spares 
will be hard to find for very old machines, so you may want to check with 
the manufacturers about their availability before buying. And aligning tape 
heads yourself is not something you usually want to do, because to do it 
properly you'll need to buy a test tape which will probably cost more than 
the machine did.

If you just want to tool around with tape and razor blades exact precision 
won't matter much. In that case you might as well get a cheap Sony or Akai 
model for barely any money at all ($75 would be too much) and only start 
looking for something more expensive and professional if you find that 
you're spending hours and hours and hours with it and want something built 
to a better spec.

Richard