Reel to Reel Machine for 15 ips playback

You really gotta get with the tape heads, with Myles Astor, Mike Lavigne, and others who are plugged in. One thing is sound. Another is tape handling.

Also your location is possibly important. There are people who supply heads or will relap yours; and others who will work on the decks. If it were me, I’d prefer to keep all that local.

Mike is good to start with since he owns several different machines and could tell you the strengths and weaknesses of each.

I got to hear Albert Porter’s almost virgin A820 with refurbished stock internals and it was wonderful. But he was playing legit old jazz safeties. To me that’s the bottleneck with tape- quality source material that isn’t simply audiophile pap that doesn’t cost a fortune, or involve mystery sources how many generations down.

@mikelavigne

@albertporter

@mylesbastor

I’d add Greg Beron, but he’s a manufacturer as well as a remanufacturer of machines, you can reach out to him on your own. https://unitedhomeaudio.com/greg-beron-designer-uha-hq-tape-decks/

@chauncey

give me a ballpark idea of your budget, your general location, and i will see if i can give you a relevant answer.

if you want the top level of performance, and are willing to pursue high quality tapes, there are some very fine choices that will give you outstanding results.

@whart

thanks Bill.

Thank you both for your help and recommendations.  

I'm really just starting to think about this so I haven't thought of a budget.  I've bought a few tapes from Acoustic Sounds as I do like the idea of the tape format and was worried about the buy now or cry later.  

The Mara machines at Acoustic Sounds are $10-$14k.  Is that a good budget or does it need to be $20-25k?  

I'm in the rocky mountains of Colorado.  

I see some Otari MTR10 1/4" for sale on craigslist in Denver.  Not sure if this would work in the home environment?  $3500

The Mara machines are reconditioned MCIs which I remember from the ’70s in studios. I’m pretty sure they get credit for auto-locate- you could punch in a number and the deck would advance (or rewind) to that point. These were 24 tracks, with MCI boards, which weren’t super expensive at the time. I know the Ampex and Studer machines tend to be regarded as 1st tier; I don’t know enough about the MARA machines to comment, other than that the product they reconditioned was a relative bargain, and considered to be an advancement, in the solid state world at the time.

It’s hard to translate studio to home-- I heard these things in a context where the tape was new, the recording was fresh and I was listening to multi-track. It’s 50 years later. It is an antediluvian technology and that can be addressed; to my knowledge, MCI was popular. back in the day precisely because it wasn’t considered "Swiss jewels."

But from a home audiophile perspective, Mike and the others I flagged will be able to give you a more current perspective as a home listener/user, and perhaps, where you can find value.

Here's a piece on MCI: https://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/ManufacturersMCI.html

As to Otari, I understand it sounds good as a sort of interim step, like pro-sumer, but the deck will be the least costly part of this-- the tapes are gonna cost in today's market.