Help wanted on wading through Otari nomenclature

[TomR]

I have seen on ebay the following:

MX5050 BII XLR
MX 5050 B2 HD
MX5050 B II 2

I know from Doc's post  in the sticky that a MX 5050 BII is supposed to work as is for the TP tapes, but what are these variants? Given the flexibility of RTR hardware, I worry that some variant will mean, oh, it does NAB only, or it is a 3 3/4 and 7.5 machine.

Thanks

[Ki Choi]

Hi Tom:

MX5050 BII 2 would be the base machine you would need for TP with two track Rec/Repro heads and four track Repro head.

MX5050 BII "XLR" ... all MX5050 models have XLR I/Os so - not a good part number

MX5050 B2 HD would be an ealier model

All Otari MX5050s have a switch in the back for you to choose IEC or NAB eq and the decks can be configured to 3 3/4 and 7.5 or 7.5 and 15 ips speed.

As many have said, buying a R2R on eBay is very risky.  I have seen decks described as "perfect" conditions - needing major work when it arrived.

It would be the best to ask here before you buy one.

Ki

[ironbut]

Hey Tom, glad to hear you're on board. You're gonna love it! I don't know what your budget is like, but being in the Bay Area really gives you some great options when buying a used deck. I imagine that you've checked the posts regarding Otari's? Check out the ones regarding buying Technics machines too. There's a lot of great advice (if I do say so myself) about buying any used reel to reel.
I'd suggest checking the local Craigs list first. There's nothing like being able to see the gear in person to get a handle on it's condition. Also, there is so much music action going on around here that you'll find that some of the eBay listings are from around here. If I had to make a wild guess, I'd say that over 50% of the machines that are advertised as running perfectly will need at least a couple of hundred(from a tech but if you're handy, you may be able to do this yourself for almost nothing more than a few clumps of hair and scalp)  to get them running at all. It's not that the sellers are lying outright, because it may well have been running perfectly when they put it in storage 2 or 3 decades ago. These are mechanical devices so it's helpful to think about them more like a car than an amp. So, if you found a Jaguar XKE in a barn and farmer Zeke said that he drove it in there when his ex-wife joined the convent 25 years ago, you wouldn't really expect it to purr the first time you cranked it over. 
Other things to consider is will you be using it to record and will you be using it to listen to 1/4 track tapes. I know,.. it's probably kinda early in the process to have to think about these things but if you don't need both of the above (as in, you won't be recording but you would like to try some old 1/4 track jazz or classical tapes from eBay) it opens up several machines other than the 4 head (5050 and Technics). A good example would be a Tascam 1/2 track deck which looks like it might be a great choice for modding into a playback only deck (replacing the record head with a 1/4 track playback head).
Like I said, I think that it's important to 'see' some decks and fool with a couple before you buy. It's easy to get stuck with a boat anchor that's just plain frustrating.
If you're looking for something that is more plug and play,.. that's a whole different subject.

[TomR]

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.