Tape Trail

Posted by stellavox on May 21, 2007 at 05:16:03

In Reply to: RE: Good reel to reel deck posted by Braxus on May 19, 2007 at 20:36:14

You indicated that you want to play quarter track tapes AND 15ips. Very few decks had both those capabilities and those that did had a fourth head to do it. The highest speed on most quarter track decks (and the lowest speed on most 2 track decks) was 7 1/2 ips.

As others mentioned, the Technics has the fourth head - with a switch on the headblock to select 2 track or quarter track. So if you really need both capabilities look carefully and see if you can find one with the %22fourth head%22. You can play 2 tracks on a quarter track machine OK, but I doubt you will find a quarter track machine that plays 15ips.

Now that I've thouroghly confused you: regarding %22fidelity%22 - I suggest that it depends on the %22quality%22 of the rest of your system and of the tapes you will be playing. Thanks to Doc B, 1500's are very expensive these days. If you're getting back into this, I always suggest the trusty A or B77; there are a million of them out there; they sound decent and spare parts will always be available - PLUS you can probably get back what you paid for it later on. Can't say that for a lot of the other Japanese decks.

Charles