Reel to Reel Tape

three items I forgot to mention,

1. the heads make a huge difference. If JRF has heads for your deck, send him the head block and get at least their top end playback head.

http://www.jrfmagnetics.com/
2. Athan ball bearing rollers and guides.

https://www.athan.com/
will lower the wow and flutter and give smoother running of the tape acorss the heads.  They also sell on ebay for more common units.

Head load resistors - Use Vishay VSR foil resistors to load the head. Also works wonders on MM/MC cartridge loading positions too. You will never hear your MC cart be so quiet.

best to all.

I’ve been using a dbx 224 and dbx 3bx with a Teac X-10R for about 35 years.  I love the sound.  I’ve had the heads replaced twice and have tried to maintain it in near mint condition.

Unfortunately, I had about 30 Ampex reels go bad from age before I new to convert them to digital.  I lost years of 70’s and 80’s era album recordings and custom mixed songs. I still have about 15 Maxell reels of that era so all was not lost.  

I’ve used a dbx 224 noise reduction unit and dbx 3bx range expander with a Teac X10R reel-to-reel for about 35 years.  Recording vinyl through the 224 makes the playback tape hiss free and to my ears the reel sounds better than the original.  

When I purchased a keeper album back in the day, the first thing I’d do is record it.  Trust me, there’s nothing like it.  If you’ve never heard a good reel recording, you are missing a real treat.

More than anything, I miss EE blank tape.

This "debate" is kinda silly. Tape decks do NOT sound better than the source material. That is not the issue for me. The whole reason for RTR
is that they are enjoyable to use and versatile if you have some microphones available.  Of course then you need mic preamps on semi to professional machines since they only have line level inputs, and typically only balanced ones. Additionally they need to be cleaned and lubricated, and for the fussy amongst us CALIBRATED to each tape formulation. But if you have a Studer A820 then you can just forget I reminded you of all these concerns...because they are so damn cool then who cares? Just where to put a 200lb tape deck??