A New Reel to Reel Tape Deck?

I am WAY too lazy to thread tape and wait for tape to rewind, but, I have heard The Tape Project copies and other high quality dubs and the sound is quite superior to vinyl and any digital sources I have heard--open and detailed sounding while managing to sound relaxed, smooth and natural.  

The United Home Audio people who recondition reel to reel machines and equip them with superior parts also like to dub their records on to tape.  I have been to their showroom and heard a comparison of the record being played to the tape made using the same record playing gear.  I can see why they like the sound of the tape copy of their records (actually smoother and less edgy), but in some respects I liked the records more (slightly better dynamics).

The BIG problem is the lack of decent pre-recorded tapes being available.  The stuff you can buy from e-bay varies greatly in quality and the really good duplicates, made by the likes of The Tape Project are extremely limited in number and in the size of the catalog.  I doubt that there will be much of a resurgence of reel tape.

ct0517,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments.  I think that we are pretty much in agreement, but you certainly fleshed out the issues more completely.  Yes, tape will remain a niche business and I would certainly hope that the niche remains healthy enough so that support in the form of parts, service and blank tape will always be available.  Tape might not be for me, personally, but, I do recognize that under ideal conditions, it remains the very best medium out there.

I read not too long ago about a discussion among current recording engineers. They were remarkably consistent in their agreement about the merits of various forms of recording.  They all agreed that high resolution digital is closest to sounding like the microphone feed, but, they also agreed that analogue tape actually sounded the best, even though it was not the most accurate.

Servicing these complex machines IS a big issue.  A very good friend of mine actually does this as a side line.  He fixes and reconditions machines for a local Washington DC area audio store.  He said that, from a purely mechanical perspective, the Otari machines are the best built.  I believe that he has managed to find the parts necessary to service most of the common brands--Technics, Otari, Akai, Studer/Revox, etc.-- but I believe he has had some trouble with certain parts for Tanberg machines.

As to speculation on the original posting, I would guess that Nagra, which continues to make consumer goods, is the mystery company planning on making new consumer machines, with Studer/Revox as my second guess.

I think it would be great to see RTR make a comeback, but, I would expect that its appeal will always be limited to a small group of truly dedicated connoisseurs.  I don't think the price can ever come down enough for tape to have mass appeal, certainly, not without major compromise in quality.  To do a really nice job, the dub would have to be at normal speed, not something where the production master is playing at twice (or more) regular playback speed.  Both the machine playing the production master and the machine producing the dubbed tape would have to be of high quality; even if there is enough demand to run several machines doing the dubbing per run of the production master, the cost would still be high.

I recently saw a new release of an album on RTR that I think would be worth owning--"Garcia and Grisman"--and the asking price for that reissue was $450. 

Norman,

Thanks for your interesting description of your personal experience.  I agree that 7.5 ips can sound very good and I take your word for it that 2x copying can be essentially perfect.  The issue there is whether the hyper-critical audiophile market would accept anything that appears to be a compromise.  Several of the premium reissue labels claim that they do regular speed one-to-one dubbing (i.e., only one slave) which means that, if volume increases, some cost savings could be achieved by making more than one copy per pass of the production master (save wear on the master too).  Given how much some people are willing to pay for nice rare vinyl discs, I think you are right about $200 being a cost point that may attract some interest.  But, it still would probably be a niche market, certainly much smaller than the market for $50 premium 45 rpm vinyl reissues.