Date:         Sat, 27 Jan 2007 21:45:50 -0500
Reply-To:     Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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From:         Steve Puntolillo <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: Tape transport gentleness was delicacy WAS reel choices was
              help in fair pricing of reel to reel machines
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Hi --

I had written:

> >I should mention that the truly lovely Studer A820 1/4 and 
> 1/2" machine
> >(which is the *other* darling of mastering decks) can also 
> lose control
> >of its tension sensing mechanism and "lose it's mind". I have not
> >experienced this first hand, but have heard so from reliable 
> sources who
> >own and love these machines.
> >
> >A possible advantage of the Studer is that it has a pinch 
> roller and so
> >at least will power its way through tapes with little bits 
> of residual
> >SSS without changing pitch. The ATR100 has no mechanism to combat
> >temporary speed fluctuations due to tape that sticks or drags.

And Richard Hess answered:

> I think Parker Dinkens might be able to shed further light on this 
> particular item (see I keep bringing everyone into this thread) as he 
> has now owned two A820s. One, sadly, was damaged beyond repair by 
> Katrina, but he has located a replacement and now has it. 
> Fortunately, all of his head blocks were saved.

See a later post for Parker's enlightening answer as well as a very nice
testimonial to Studer and the A820.

Richard continued:

> Also, this _may_ be the reason that Mark Donahue uses A80 transports 
> for his work--Steve, I know that you are very pleased with yours for 
> tapes with bad splices.

Mark has indeed been kind enough to encourage me to put an A80RC here to
good use. ( http://www.sonicraft.com/a2dx.html#2T -- scroll down a bit
).

Not everyone has the budget to properly repair tapes with sticky
splices. Especially, when there are upwards of (70) 15 ips 10.5" reels
literally *riddled* with them. We had such a job come in and we ended up
evaluating a few machines to decide which to use.

In another post Scott Phillips wrote:

> I would think the APR series would behave themselves pretty well under
> these conditions...  

We tried this job on an APR-5000 first. As expected, this machine got
very high marks for its gentleness. The jog shuttle allowed us to FF and
RW at a low speed, which is a big plus with challenged tapes. It also
sounds very nice. However, splices snagging on static surfaces in the
tape path were audible. 

The Technics RS1500 (same model that Tom Fine likes) is really a
terrific little machine for anyone on a budget. It did the absolute best
job of playing the tapes without dropouts from the splices. This, we
felt, was an advantage of its IsoLoop tape path. We could see the supply
reel bounce as sticky splices let go of the layer of tape underneath.
Yet never did we *hear* the bounce in the transfer. And, its constant
tension FF & RW was gentle enough that we felt relatively (although not
completely) comfortable. We didn't feel that it sounded outstanding, but
certainly very respectable. 

The Studer A80RC is very gentle on tape, although perhaps not quite as
gentle as the APR-5000. We were pleasantly surprised at how well it
handled the sticky splices -- almost as well as the Technics. It has
adjustable FF/RW speed and we felt very secure slowly shuttling tapes
whenever necessary. And, this particular model of A80, with it's second
generation class A discrete transistor playback amps, sounds very nice.

Using the Studer meant that we'd have to eat the cost of fixing the
occasional splice-related glitch that made it past the machine's
transport. But, great sound wins out here and we decided to use the
Studer instead of the Technics for this particular job.

Hope this info helps someone.

Best,

-- Steve

========================================================
Steve Puntolillo
Sonicraft A2DX Lab - Ultimate A_nalog 2 D_igital X_fers
http://www.sonicraft.com/a2dx
========================================================