Refurbished/Rebuilt Reel To Reel Tape Deck

Good points above. I have a Teac X1000R (3.75 and 7.5 ips 4 track) and a modest collection of 70's prerecorded tapes. The 7.5 ips tapes sound very good. The sound has a special quality and playing the tape is fun to do. It is the polar opposite of streaming. I don't think I'll ever have a 15 ips deck but I've heard them at a couple audio shows and the sound of these new tapes is certainly impressive.

There is a page on The Tape Project site that talks about suitable decks. Regarding the specific Revox deck you mention you might have to buy a vintage unit and have it refurbished by a competent tech. There should be a repair facility in most large cities that specializes in recording equipment (mixing desks, tape decks, guitar amps, etc.) that could do the refurb. In Seattle there's a place called Condor Electronics that I can personally vouch for. If you can locate such a repair facility they might be a good resource on finding your particular deck or at least they could tell you how much it would cost to completely refurbish one.

Regarding the B77 Mk II there are a couple on ebay now. A vintage model that needs work is listed at $1199 and a fully refurbished deck from Switzerland is listed at $4951. Those two decks probably represent a pretty good bracket for what you will have to pay.

That is all true. For example, a pristine copy at 7.5 ips  of Hendrix’s "Are You Experienced?"...that ...will blow your mind.

IMO and IME, no LP or digital copy you can buy... remastered, whatever, will come close to that tape.

There were a fair number of those sort of tapes released....

But the prices are going up....

And.. you have a very limited amount of runs through the tape, to capture it, as the tapes are definitely deteriorating as time passes....

My totally rebuilt and recapped Pioneer 707 is simply amazing.

I play a mixture of pre recorded tapes ( when I can find them at reasonable prices) and my own recorded tapes from Qobuz hires streams.
If you have not tried that method you need to!

OP
I had a Revox B77 HS unit but running at 15ips uses a lot of tape very fast.
Plus you then only have 7.5 and 15ips speeds.
All pre recorded tapes are 3.75 and 7.5 ips only.
So you would not be able to play the 3.75ips tapes.

To play all commercially available pre recorded tapes you need a machine that does 3.75 and 7.5 4 track.

Good luck, R2R is a wonderful world!

" Copying from a LP, CD or download is a waste of time and money! Only original tapes are worth owning and playing!"

Not true, I make mix tapes on my R2R that I use in my garage system. I can choose different cuts to make "theme" tapes or cuts from the same artist without recording the whole album or cd. I sell many different things on Craigslist and the Pioneer RT-707 is always getting positive comments from my CL visitors. Bottom line is, "it’s fun"!

http://gallery.audioasylum.com/cgi/upload.mpl?u=28077&f=garagereel1.jpg&v=f&UserImages=28077&session=421945342&invite=&w=905&h=679

I agree entirely with "roberjerman".

I plan to buy/use pre-recorded tapes from The Tape Project ( https://tapeproject.com ), Opus 3 ( http://www.opus3records.com/am_list.html ) etc.

Copying from a LP, CD or download is a waste of time and money! Only original tapes are worth owning and playing!

What do you plan on doing with a reel-to-reel machine if you buy one?

The high cost of original RTR tapes is a drawback! I have three decks: Teac, Pioneer and a tube Sony.