Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

---

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Tape Trail ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Re: Ampex PR10---Ohhhhhhh Noooooooo

Posted by Marantzguy (P) on October 31, 2005 at 18:03:48

In Reply to: Ampex PR10 posted by Brusco on October 31, 2005 at 13:23:29:

Hi, Brusco:

Yes, the basic PR-10 was designed for 1/4" tape and came in a wide range of configurations from full-track monaural to 1/2-track monaural, 1/4-track stereo and even 2-track stereo. Speeds were commonly 3-3/4 ips and 7-1/2 ips and even rarer, 7-1/2 and maybe even 15 ips. You would not get much on a 7' reel at 15 ips, though!

I hope you did not have to pay heavily for that PR-10.

I hate to "rain on your parade", but...

In my personal experience, the PR-10 is not the best among Ampex machines. I owned perhaps two of them over the years, and at first, always thought they were "soooo coool".

Not so!

They are very prone to problems of all sorts. I spent a lot of precious time trying my best to get my personal PR-10 to work and then it was a pain trying to get rid of it, but that was over twenty years ago! The electronics are very cramped, a virtual "explosion in a sphagetti factory" as it were. There are lots of funky connections within the box and I seem to remember lots and lots of stuff looking like "wire wrap" in there, as well. Not good at all!

Keep in mind that all or most of the coupling caps should be changed and there is a liklihood that some of the filter cans are also in need of replacement by now. The machine is basically easily over 40 years old, or OLDER!

To answer your question, however:

I believe that the PR-10 was NOT designed to accept 10.5" reels. It was made only to work basically with 7" reels as far as I remember. Aluminum ones would look nice on it or perhaps how about one of those fancy translucent green, yellow or better yet: blue or RED reels?

If you have a standard head stack containing 1/4-track stereo heads and if you are willing to do some work on the electronics, you may in fact, enjoy the machine. There are better sounding tubed decks out there for you to discover. However, any 350-351 transport would eat that PR-10 for lunch.

If it proves to be a problem, move in the direction of a bigger studio deck and enjoy.

Remember this fact: The PR-10 was considered a "Portable Recorder".

HAHAHAHAHA! OOOOh YEAH!

"Portable"? as in 'sore back' portable?

Happy Tape Trails!

Richard Links
Berkeley, CA

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Sonic Craft

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---