I need to get my hands on a working reel-to-reel tape recorder. Problem is, the ones I’ve seen on Ebay & Craigslist look kind of junky and the ones that aren’t are a zillion bucks.
If I’m going to spend a chunk I’d rather just get a new one than fool around with an old used one.
Are there any companies that still make these things for the U.S. market?
I think your first question is, what are you going to use it for, the next question is, how much do you want to pay?
There are machines that are regularly refurbished to new, such as Revox, or perhaps Studer.
The last ones I can recall that were made were Tascam.
Trouble is, you are looking at the better part of $1000 upwards.
You are best going for an honest second hand machine.
You might be better of going into PM with me, find a few for sale and post links to me and I will tell you what you need to know.
Sentimental reasons.
I found a bunch of reel tapes in the attic of my parents house and would like to listen to them. I remember my Pop had a huge recorder back in the 60’s and he would record himself and us kids. I doubt there is any music on them.
I know my Mother discarded that recorder after he died. It hadn’t worked for many years.
I thought I could find one on Ebay or Craigslist that would be good enough. But everything I’ve seen seems not to be in working order or is a quadrillion dollars.
An alternative approach might be finding someone who offers the service of transferring the content of those tapes to another medium.
If you only have a few and lack the technical knowledge to transfer them, I suggest this. Or find a nerd (like me) locally and let him do it. Probably cheaper than buying a high-quality old machine, although I bought an Akai 360 a few years ago on eBay for about $300 that works fine.
60’s tapes are probably quarter-track, 2 chan, but they could be half-track, or even mono, 1 chan. Using the wrong head config could cause problems, possibly minor.
What size diameter are the reels? 7 or 5 inch was common. larger (11") would be harder to work with, and would have come only from professional equipment. How many do you have?
Well, you didn’t say how much you want to spend. Problem is, these decks were never cheap, even the bottom-of-the-line units were a few hundred bucks. My advice would be to stick to consumer name brands: Akai, Teac, Sony, Pioneer. Pro brands (Tascam, Otari, Ampex) are going to be out of your range. I see a KLH deck on ebay right now starting at $20 with no bids. In their day, KLH made quality equipment, but this was apparently built for them, rather than by them (I’m familiar with most of KLH’s stuff from back then, and I’d never knew they made this). Still, assuming it works (and that’s a big IF) it will probably do what you need.
The decks in your range will probably have 7" reels and mechanical (rather than electromechanical) controls. That means you turn a knob to change the mode from rewind, fast forward, play, stop, and press a separate button for record (which you won’t need). Stay away from anything that seems to be designed to be portable, they’re generally lower quality, and likely will be in worse shape from having been moved around.
Another thing that’s going to make this more difficult is shipping. These things are big and heavy, so shipping won’t be cheap.
Not totally accurate. A lot of higher-end consumer decks used 10" (not 11") reels. However, it’s much more likely that the OP has smaller reels.
Here’s a relatively cheap one (7") that’s listed as working. But again, without knowing your budget, this could just be a waste of time.
I’m not sure but I think they’re 7. I’ll look on the box when I go back up there next week. They are larger, but they’re definately not 10.
I found one on Craigslist for $150 that the seller says plays very well. I’m going to go check it out tomorrow and if it’s like he says I’ll buy it. If it lasts long enough to let me listen to the tapes once each I’ll be happy.
One other thing to keep in mind: if you buy an inexpensive working one on eBay and save the packaging, once you transfer everything to digital, you can probably resell it for near what you paid for it (less shipping, of course).
Use a ruler. I’ll bet they are 7 inches in diameter, give or take 1/8 inch. And most likely plastic.
And Running with Scissors is right, 10" is the next size up, not 11. I never saw anything in between 7 and 10 for 1/4" wide audio tape.
Be aware that magnetic tape doesn’t last forever, especially if it’s been stored in an attic where you get some wide temperature swings. There may not be much left to listen to on these tapes. I’ve seen old tapes that only played once, with the surface of the tape (which contains the magnetic particles that store the sound) scraping off as the tape ran across the tape head due to the tape being so old and the adhesives in it having decayed to the point of uselessness.
Hopefully your tapes will be in decent shape. If they were mine, I would hook up the output of the reel-to-reel deck to a computer and record anything that came off of the tapes onto a digital format so it won’t decay any further.
Couple of other things to keep in mind:
Depending on the age of the tapes, they could be made of acetate, which breaks easily. You’ll have to use extreme caution when threading/playing, and may want to invest in a splicing block. Newer tapes were made of Mylar, which rarely breaks, but can stretch.
Also, we haven’t spoken about tape speed. Most consumers used 3 3/4 IPS (inches per second) when recording, and most consumer decks were dual speed(3 3/4 & 7 1/2). However, some lower end decks also offered 1 7/8 IPS for longer, lower quality recordings (like voice-only). If that’s how your tapes are recorded, your search is going to be more difficult.
I have done quite a bit of informal research on this topic, and dispute much of the on-the-street knowledge about magnetic tape longevity.
To start with data, I have some acetate-backed tapes from 1958-1962 that are in pristine shape. Minimal cupping, no oxide shed, no edge damage, perfectly readable. They have been stored in a home environment, but not climate-controlled by any means, usually in a (sometimes dry) basement with 50-65F temps year-round.
And I have some 1970’s tapes that turned to gum before the 70’s were over. Playing them is a challenge. They were stored in similar environments. (Ampex/Sony/3M)
In 1975, I opened a case of Ampex 456 pancakes that was NG out of the virgin box, and started shedding immediately. This box was replaced free by Ampex when they realized that they had a seriously defective product that couldn’t be used. The mfr’s rep made a personal visit to my studio to see this and I showed him the oxide flaking off the heads seconds after the reels started moving. Every reel in the box was bad.
So the age and environmental factors are not sufficient to determine the condition of old recording medium. Quality of manufacturing, even with reputable firms like Ampex, may have more to do with it than age and environment.
Running with Scissors is right about the backing, though. If you have a cheap playback unit, you could break the tape if acetate, or stretch it, if polyester. This is more likely to happen with the thin (<1.5 mil) tapes than standard thickness. If your box says 1200 ft for a 7 inch reel, that should be standard. Anything longer (1800, 2400, 3600 ft) should be treated very carefully, as it is thinner and more delicate.
One nice thing about modern technology is if you can’t play back at the correct speed, you can fix this in almost any sound editor by speeding up or slowing down the playback. Purists will argue that this doesn’t properly handle the EQ and introduces distortion, but it should be OK for most purposes, especially non-critical voice recordings.
The tapes were in commercial boxes. I wish they were in front of me so I could give you some detail.
Pop bought that tape recorder right around when I was born in '60, and had bought a cassette recorder in about '71. So those reel tapes were from that 11 year period. Looking at tapes online I’m almost certain they are 7 inchers. I’ll check when I go back up next week.
I can only guess what’s on them. Could be just a bunch of silly drek. Could just be a babling baby. Could be a form of log or diary. My siblings and I would like to plan an evening where we sit and listen to them.
My dad bought one of the same vintage. It was a Webcor, used 7" tapes and was mono. When/if you start the playback, record it - most smart phones or cameras do recording. Transfer the recordings to a CD or onto a hard disk. The tapes/tape deck may not survive more than one playing.
How about find a local who has one , eg a historian or museum type place,
and listen to a sample of the tapes using their equipment, for free.
Maybe they just want to test if their device is working, and you can clean the heads and lube the mechanism. If you can’t get it working, no harm done, it wasn’t working anyway…
Ah, the Webcor, I remember it well! Followed by the Wollensak in my school existance.
Recording to a smart phone or cheap audio recorder is not recommended if this is of archive importance, especially if you are using the built-in mic. If you are subsequently transferring the resulting recording to a CD, you are degrading it twice, like making a xerox of a xerox. This is a shitty way to accomplish this task.
And the tapes may or may not survive a single playing. Please see my previous post(s) on this subject.
I am almost certain that my Dads recorder was a Wollensak
It said “Stereo” on it. And it had a clunky metal external microphone you could slay Abel with.
So what does that mean for the type of machine I should look for to play those tapes?
Yes, listen to what Musicat says. The tapes may die instantly on playing.
If the contents are of reasonable personal value go find a professional transfer company. There are lots about. You are not exactly the first person with this need. A professional can do a lot of things to make the process more likely to succeed well. Indeed there are techniques that can get information off a tape that you never realised was there - yielding an audio result that is better than you ever heard before. Some useful info as an example of one service here.
Obviously it depends upon your budget and the number of tapes you have, but you may only get one chance to get it right.
The kind of machine your tapes were recorded on is not important. There were broad standards even then. In fact, I wouldn’t expect vintage recorders of that era (1950’s) to be the best way to recover what you have, although they certainly will work. The best way would be to use a professional service, or the best, most modern unit you can buy that will play those formats, and the quarter-track format was used from the early 1960’s to the 1990’s at least.
The Wollensak you pictured is indeed the model that was the workhorse of many schools, but is of interest today only to collectors of vintage machinery.
Newer units will physically handle the tape with the least chance of damage. It’s a pretty complex engineering problem to be able to handle thin, brittle tape between two reels spinning at different speeds and coming to an abrupt stop without tape damage. Only the best units in the best of condition can do this safely, and once a tape is stretched, you can’t un-stretch it.
For a similar reason, if you have vintage 78RPM discs that you want to extract the sounds from, you would not look for a 1930’s player, but the most modern unit you can afford, one adapted to handle that format.
Modern electronics will reproduce the sound better than any vintage unit. You have no worry about that.
