Being a long time enthusiast of reel to reel tape recorders I have notices that a lot of users of tape decks like to improve there playback sound quality by using external preamps like Bottehead, King Cello and others,
Now I’m down to two tape recorders, Teac X2000M and Tascam BR-20, I use the X2000M mostly for playback only, the BR-20 is for recording and playback, this deck is stock, has new heads and I have done a complete alignment to factory spec’s and I think it sounds great, although Greg Beron of UHA doesn’t think so, and has done some serious upgrades to improve the sound quality but without a side by side A-B test I don’t know how much, so my question is has anybody improved the sound of the BR-20 using outboard repro preamp,
One of the big problems with these outboard preamps to me is the length of cables running from the heads to the preamp, I remember back in the late 1950 they sold tape decks from Sony and Viking (I had a Viking) that were for playback only, they had no electronics in them, you would use the tape head input that many preamps and amps had back then, the biggest problem was hum and noise because of the long cable length form the heads, so wouldn’t that still be a problem today? also I notice these outboard preamp of today use tubes, dose anyone make a small solid state preamp that would be a nice option and made small enough to fit inside the tape deck so the cables from the heads could be kept short. Pete
Now I’m down to two tape recorders, Teac X2000M and Tascam BR-20, I use the X2000M mostly for playback only, the BR-20 is for recording and playback, this deck is stock, has new heads and I have done a complete alignment to factory spec’s and I think it sounds great, although Greg Beron of UHA doesn’t think so, and has done some serious upgrades to improve the sound quality but without a side by side A-B test I don’t know how much, so my question is has anybody improved the sound of the BR-20 using outboard repro preamp,
One of the big problems with these outboard preamps to me is the length of cables running from the heads to the preamp, I remember back in the late 1950 they sold tape decks from Sony and Viking (I had a Viking) that were for playback only, they had no electronics in them, you would use the tape head input that many preamps and amps had back then, the biggest problem was hum and noise because of the long cable length form the heads, so wouldn’t that still be a problem today? also I notice these outboard preamp of today use tubes, dose anyone make a small solid state preamp that would be a nice option and made small enough to fit inside the tape deck so the cables from the heads could be kept short. Pete
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