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« on: July 09, 2008, 09:13:24 AM »
Thanks, Steve. Signing up the the Tape Project (I went the charter route) represents a new era in RTR to me. Back in the 70's and early 80's I always had a RTR in my system, initially a Tandberg 92XX series and then a Teac, after my Tandberg died an ugly death. I collected a fair number of RTR's, from various manufacturers (Ampex, Stereotape, then Barclay Crocker). I kept the tapes but didn't have a deck for about 20 years. When I first started to lurk around ebay I was stunned and shocked about the large amount of RTR stuff available, and I acquired a ReVox A77 in nice shape and a few more tapes (from ebay and Irvington Music) and have enjoyed rolling those. My technical knowledge of the RTR world was never more than a consumer whose primary interest was playback. So I found a few things confusing at first but now I have a good handle on the requirements.
Right now I'm probably going to to the stock thing and acquire a deck which can play the tapes in its native mode. For that reason I'm looking at the Otari MX5050 (and trying to figure out which model number means what) and the Technics 1520. I was impressed by your set up (boy is the build quality of the Technics high) and that might be a next step -I do get the idea of the performance advantage of bypassing the deck's built in electronics (maybe Otari could make this an option on their units) and also tweaking the heads, but just not ready to spend the $$ quite yet until I have a library of tapes. (None, so far - I presume the first one I'll get will be 007, followed by the first 6).
I will continue to run the A77 for the 4 track tapes (most of which are 7.5 ips), although I'd love to upgrade to a B77 with an onboard Dolby circuit, but that's for another forum.
I am concerned about service and so on. I live in the south bay, as I think you know, and am grateful for any info you can share. I work in San Francisco, fortunately I drive a Hybrid Civic.