Reel to Reel Options

limomangus,

A friend has a Technics reel to reel like yours and it is a very nice machine.  Two techs I know also like those machines a lot for the sound and build quality.  However, one tech notes that it is stuffed with Panasonic electrolytic caps that will, in time, leak and the electrolytic paste inside of these caps is highly corrosive; if the leaking substance reaches the circuit board traces that will take out the trace.  He recommends replacement of those caps.  Given how many are in the machine it is not a cheap job, but the machine deserves such treatment.  He got back the machine from the tech along with a bag with 134 caps; some of them had started to leak.

as long as we are discussing this:  i have a very nice reel to reel; been all fixed up to latest specs and such...not a $10K unit, but about $2K in it; worked nice 20 years ago and with the updates, expect it still will...HOWEVER...isnt a R2R only going to sounds as good as the source and the connections?  My older Yamaha receiver has tape 1/tape 2 loop in is, so i can record from sources such as a turntable, cd maybe, and fm stereo......but with those fairly crappy sources...and probably not the best line connections and noise galore...what is one to do?  I think i may have wasted $1200 on a dinosaur that wont bite....any ideas?

It would be great if a R2R resurgence happened, with both machines and tapes, similar to what has happened with vinyl. I remember being awe-struck at a Sansui deck my uncle had more than 50 years ago. Entry-level would probably not be possible, keeping people from testing the waters, and I'm sure that's a factor. Also not as much music already available like there was with vinyl. But if some company or consortium of companies decided to wake up that market I'm curious as to how it would fare. Vinyl is of no interest to me, I couldn't wait to move on from them when that was primarily what we had. But I get that there can be something special to high-quality analog recordings. I would definitely want to try R2R if some of the barriers noted in this thread were at least somewhat alleviated. 

Biggest problems with reel to reel decks are

1. they’re old and need to be restored 

2. lack of tapes - studio recordings are rare and expensive, buying used old tapes is risky. 
 

The decks are cool though. And if you get one that’s in excellent condition and you plan on recording your favorite vinyl onto tapes it could be awesome to listen to.

otherwise it’s the same concept as getting into vinyl - you end up dumping a $hit ton of money into it and it ends up sitting collecting dust because it’s a pain to use. 

Some 7.5 ips tapes that can be found are quite nice sounding and better than the vinyl issue.  Really great sounding tapes tend to be 15 ips tapes that are very small quantity copies of master tapes.  These tend to cost $500 and more.  The selection of \music is extremely limited.  As benchmarks of what can be accomplished with recorded music, it is hard to beat these tapes; they have a natural and lively sound that is hard to find from any other format.  But, there is too little available material for it to be an every day source of pleasure.