What's the appeal of reel-to-reel tape decks?

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Almost everytime I see a photo of some audiophile's cool (and I mean that sincerely) analog listening set-up, there's a big reel-to-reel tape deck in there.

I'm a very analog-oriented guy myself, but I don't know anything about these. I'm 30. I wasn't around when, I guess, they were normal, common consumer items that you could buy at Sears or something. They certainly LOOK cool, in my opinion. Should I get one? Am I missing out?

― J. Hernandez (Pinball), Monday, 8 January 2007 23:45 (eighteen years ago)

they look cool, and if you have access to lots of audio archives (like at a college or other institution), they can come in handy. i used one to listen to a lecture John Cage gave at Oberlin in the 80s this past semester. otherwise, they are aesthetically pleasing but virtually useless, unless you're REALLY into weird recording techniques.

― the table is the table (treesessplode), Monday, 8 January 2007 23:53 (eighteen years ago)

the appeal is that they sound great.

good luck finding any of your favorite commercially released music on reel-to-reel though

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 8 January 2007 23:54 (eighteen years ago)

lol PiL's Metal Reel

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Monday, 8 January 2007 23:57 (eighteen years ago)

I have a Sony 1/2-inch R2R that I've never used; it's a 110V late-'60s model and I've never got round to buying/borrowing a transformer for it. £10 from a charity shop with a stack of old tapes which appear to contain recordings of company meetings, radio shows, etc. Sony came in its original box, mailed from the manufacturers to the audio dealers in Massachusetts - postmark is something like Aug 1969.

I even bought a blank Quantegy tape, cos I fancied bouncing down some digital multitrack recordings to 1/2-inch stereo for that tape compression warmth. Of course, the heads might not have been cleaned in 30 years...

And yes, most audiophiles who have them acquired them so they could make (great-sounding) tapes of their vinyl LPs, and not wear out the LP...

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:04 (eighteen years ago)

i saw this at th thrift and didn't buy it..http://i24.ebayimg.com/01/i/01/d2/43/0a_1_b.JPG i love th reel and its many twists and turns

― dan bunnybrain (dan bunnybrain), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:09 (eighteen years ago)

Well, you'd be surprised how many albums from the '60 and '70s released on 1/4 inch tape that you can still find in great sounding condition and often find much cheaper than comparable vinyl. If you can find a deck in good shape for under $100, and really like the analog sound, I'd say it's worth having. I don't use my Sony deck very often, but it's fun to turn on every now and then. Plus, as other have mentioned, you never know when you'll stumble into a treasure trove of field recordings or bootlegs. A few years back, I spent a couple days digitizing some John Hartford field recordings on 1/4 reels for a friend. It was an amazing listening experience.

― Roy Kasten (Roy Kasten), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:20 (eighteen years ago)

i've always wanted to hear one, i hear they sound amazing. i believe it though, cuz listening to stuff in a studio on 2 inch sounds great so i'd imagine this is the closest thing to that.

― M@tt He1geson: Sassy and I Don't Care Who Knows It (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:27 (eighteen years ago)

have one slowly spooling away behind you while you prod an old synth moodily with two fingers: hey presto, instant early-human-league cool.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:30 (eighteen years ago)

danzig talks about how much he loves his reel-to-reel in the new onion AV club. and 8-tracks. he's big in to 8-tracks these days apparently.

― M@tt He1geson: Sassy and I Don't Care Who Knows It (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:40 (eighteen years ago)

When I joined one of those 12-records-for-a-penny clubs (Columbia House?) virtually every album in the catalogue was available on reel-to-reel. Frehley's Comet, for instance.

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 00:52 (eighteen years ago)

I didn't even know I wanted one until now.

― Andi Headphones (Andi Headphones), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 01:17 (eighteen years ago)

I saw a seemingly unused Akai at a rummage sale about 20 years ago for $35 (I think). I didn't get it because I figured it would be one more thing taking up space. It had an 8-track cartridge recorder built into it; apparently it was for transferring your R-R to 8-track. Looked cool too, though not as much as the one posted at the start.

― nickn (nickn), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 02:08 (eighteen years ago)

it might be just me, but movies from the mid-60's to mid-70's made it look like these things were really high-end status symbols, I never would have thought it an everyday retail format.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 02:16 (eighteen years ago)

Antone's record store down here in Austin stocks a surprisingly high number of reels. I don't have a reel player, but seeing a Leadbelly reel for $4 made me want to buy one.

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 02:20 (eighteen years ago)

So when you reach the end, you have to rewind the whole thing, right?

My dad had one, but only a few classical tapes. One of lute music.

― bendy (bendy), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 02:50 (eighteen years ago)

They sound fantastic. Really.

Also, you don't have to rewind the whole thing, they are two-sided, so you just flip the reels and play it the other way. Like a cassette, but not shitty sounding.

― John Justen says Toonces was one of the most talented cats on televison (johnjus, Tuesday, 9 January 2007 03:04 (eighteen years ago)

and listen to the tape in reverse...

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 08:06 (eighteen years ago)

Also great for making yer-actual physical cut-ups. Although I'm not sure if you can do it on the uprights with much accuracy - we used to have some of the lay-down editing ones at college to manually edit interviews with.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 14:48 (eighteen years ago)

Just remembered the term: Splicing

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 14:54 (eighteen years ago)

I still have a Sony TC377 w/a missing pinch roller :( also, a Ferrograph Series 7 that's fucked. The Ferrograph is a half-track, and it sounded great. I'm def. going to get it fixed this year.

I used to be great at tape splicing, I still have my splicing block somewhere. I haven't used it in over 15 years, I think.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

the appeal is being able to pretend yer terry riley.

― be home by 11 (orion), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 15:12 (eighteen years ago)

or OMD or teh humang league

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 15:18 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.prosoundweb.com/recording/tapeop/edit/edit5_tapeloop.gif

― Mark (MarkR), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

From the POV of having one at work for people to listen to old recordings of plays and lectures on, I HATE them, because barely anyone knows how to use it except me and I barely know how to use it. Also all our tapes are in shoddy condition, seemingly.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 15:32 (eighteen years ago)

cross reference with the drone/psych/freak thread...

I'm thinkin' of trying it out again. All clean toothed and claustrophobic. Gonna make old scupper style tape loops like the Soft Machine or Swope, have em loopin all around the world... old Wollensacks, Teacs, Heathkits, Panasonics, Starlites, Revoxes.. hummin' and preserving like the life of Riley. My own rainbow support system where I'mt the curved general and the sounds imposture fortified by a still visual aid. A freak out of pigeon cries at down doppling all over themselves, conjuring up Fortuna, accidental occurences of grazed mating and I'm gonna score it all to a tranquil outdoor Super 8 leniency of civility. (MV 52)

― be home by 11 (orion), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 15:38 (eighteen years ago)

how long is a reel to reel tape? i think i remember a friend's dad liking them because he could listen to whole symphonies in entirety as compared to flipping records...is that correct?

― M@tt He1geson: Sassy and I Don't Care Who Knows It (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 16:32 (eighteen years ago)

Yes. Sort of. You can record at various speeds, and the slower the tape speed, the more you can fit on a tape. Unfortunately, the lower the tape speed, the lower the fidelity.

I was just splicing tape last week! (Well, repairing thirty year old splices, mostly). It's a dying art.

― John Justen says Toonces was one of the most talented cats on televison (johnjus, Tuesday, 9 January 2007 16:51 (eighteen years ago)

as live performance instruments, the process of moving the tape back and forth across the heads is very expressive / gestural / sounds like vinyl scratching but with a lot more control over the sound

http://www.hughlecaine.com/en/sptape.html

one of my favorite improvisers is joseph hammer, who's main axe is an increasingly beat up Ampex Model 600, recording fragments of radio, feedback & room sound onto his tapes and then playing with the sounds they're captured

― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

/as they're captured

― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 19:14 (eighteen years ago)

There are two of 'em where I work (university archive), along with a home stereo console style 8-track player and apparently every style of VCR that ever existed.

I've only had to use it once to transfer a couple of small recordings onto CD. It took me longer to load the damn tape than it did to actually hear the recording. I then realized why cassettes were such a convenience innovation.

― joygoat (joygoat), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 20:05 (eighteen years ago)

What's the appeal of reel-to-reel tape decks?

Möbius Strips

― songs and ballads of the bituminous miners (sanskrit), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 20:25 (eighteen years ago)

f you are a producer.. tape saturation and tape compression.. recording you crappy soft synth techno song onto tape and then spitting it back out can do wonders for the sound.

― speculator (speculator), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)

back in my radio days i got to do a tiny bit of splicing. razor blades and chinagraphs. joyous. then suddenly everything went digital and it was shit :)

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 9 January 2007 23:58 (eighteen years ago)

When I was a young teen in the early seventies I had a cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder inmy bedroom, and whenever one of my favorite songs would come on the radio I would tape it. I remember I taped "In The Summertime" by Mungo Jerry and I was so excited! I would play it over and over and dance around my room.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 00:55 (eighteen years ago)

Ditto for me, except I recorded my barely competent electric guitar playing. I had the brilliant idea that if I recorded at 3 3/4 and then played it back at 7 1/2 I would only have to play half as fast as the song called for, thereby making me sound like a guitar god. It just sounded like fast crap, rather than slow crap. I then switched to "experimental" music and just made weird sounds with it.

It was a VM ("Voice of Music") portable, which must have weighed 40 pounds.

― nickn (nickn), Wednesday, 10 January 2007 01:09 (eighteen years ago)

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