A few weeks ago Patrick Sinegal sent me one of his Reeltronix takeup reels. You may have seen mention of these a few times before around here. The reels are completely machined from scratch - even the hubs - and finished with various anodized colors. The one I received is entirely black, very stealth looking.
Everything about these reels is first class. They come in beautiful packaging, that falls second only to the reel itself. The reel is a work of art, reminding one of the custom car build reality shows where the designer mills a custom set of wheels for one of his projects. The reel has rather narrow spokes which reveal the tape pack extremely well, making it really easy to locate the leader that we put between songs on our samplers, allowing us to quickly cue up a particular song. And yes, a good tape packs perfectly on the reel. The hubs seem to fit just right on my Nagra NAB adapters and spin without eccentricity - a problem that can appear with some plastic hubs as the Nagra adapters seem teeny bit undersize. The flanges are fairly thick and super flat, and on the Nagra's blazing fast wind the thing almost looks like a race car wheel or a prop on a WWII fighter.
I have been meaning to set aside some time for a photo of the reel on my Nagra and I will try to do that this week. In the meantime if you have a real jewel of a deck like an ATR or Studer or Nagra, or one of the UHA or J-corder decks, you definitely need to give one of these take up reel serious consideration -
http://reeltronix.com/Oh yeah, the hat is very cool too!
