Re: [ARSCLIST] need audio cassette deck suggestions

["Richard L. Hess" <ArcLists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, David,

The quality of the heads in Nakamichis in general and the auto-play 
azimuth feature of the Dragon in particular (and the manual play 
azimuth of the CR-7 and perhaps a few others) allows for optimizing 
playback to get the highest quality possible from the transfers.

While I was originally focusing on reel-tape restoration, a good 
friend of mine who used to work in the standard tape lab (and 
evaluated tapes and recorders) at Ampex, told me if I was thinking of 
expanding into cassettes there was no substitute, overall, for the 
Dragon. He thought that the Studers might have better transports and 
the Tandbergs might have better electronics (I hope I got that 
correct), but the heads and the azimuth-adjust feature made the 
Nakamichis really the only choice for quality work.

The current setup of my tape restoration suite features two Dragons, 
and they see a lot of use.TAP Electronics in southern California can 
still maintain them, I believe. They have maintained several of mine.

The Tascam 122B is a workhorse, but it's difficult to adjust its 
azimuth and recently (could have been a defective machine) the work I 
heard done on one (at the ARSC conference) wasn't up to par.

One thing to consider if you've got a massive project and quality is 
of less of a concern, would be to consider a Tascam 234 and transfer 
all four tracks of each cassette at double speed. That would require 
re-equalization and re-speeding and reversing two of the four tracks 
in the computer, but it would cut the time to 1/4 while maintaining 
let's say 60% of the quality you would get from the Dragon -- perhaps 
a bit more.

Cheers,

Richard

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                              richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada             http://www.richardhess.com/
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm