Hi John,
Thanks for the new post.
Yes we have done quite a bit of work on these decks; I've employed two technicians with a considerable level of experience to work on these decks. One has even done design work for a major audiophile manufacturer for many years, (one that everyone would know and respect).
The important point is that the UHA-HQ decks are produced with similar expertise and design skill employed by major audiophile manufacturers. Yes we use a Tascam deck for its nice tape path capabilities but Paul is correct the electronics are not all that. So for our higher end decks where we offer a UHA-HQ preamp like the Phase5 or Phase6 decks we use the tape path and the box but that's about it.
Everyone that has heard the deck seems to be impressed, Jonathan Valin from The Absolute Sound magazine wrote,
"The very item I (and a lot of other folks) called the best source component at RMAF (and would've named the best source component at CES, if we'd given an award for best source component at CES)". Pretty powerful words considering the number of rooms at these shows, RMAF had 470 exhibitors according to their web site and CES had (I have seen) approximately 240 high end audio exhibitors. That's quite a few source components!
However a very important point to remember about this is that during these shows we played primarily The Tape Project tapes. Our primary focus has always been to build a UHA-HQ deck to do justice to the finest source material available in the world today, The Tape Project tapes.
We do not make that statement lightly or without considerable experience in both digital and analog hardware and software. In our retail store United Home Audio we have some of the finest and most expensive audio equipment in the world. Our reference system is pictured below, we do our tape deck listening evaluations on an MBL system that retails for over $300,000 (pictured below). For example just the Tara Labs Zero interconnects are $15,000 per pair.
This system is capable of discerning the slightest and most minute differences in the UHA-HQ preamp designs we have developed over the last two years. We have spent countless hours listening and tweaking the final designs. The Tape Project tapes have been invaluable in this process because of they offered a standard, a base line that was as close to the actual performance as possible. This allowed us to design our decks sound to that absolute.