Reel to Reel Head Wire out and associated topics

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Fred, while I can appreciate your "distaste" for audiophiles, my guess is that we/they are keeping a lot of technicians in business so you need to learn to work with us!

+1
 

tony ky ma

Industry Expert
Aug 21, 2010
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I don't know how to measure difference of transparency, emotion,sound stage, sound density, etc, all I know comparison will tell about, of cause basic tuning we did every time before recording by qualify person still came out so different in each modification of transparency, emotion, sound density . for a consumer , once right level has been set then no need to watch the moving of the needle , less of circuitry more better sound
tony ma
 

microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
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Fred, while I can appreciate your "distaste" for audiophiles, my guess is that we/they are keeping a lot of technicians in business so you need to learn to work with us!

IMHO it goes the other way - audiophiles can learn a lot from Fred Thal, considered by any one in the business as being one of top experts in Studer A80 and A820 matters (another one is Andreas Kuhn). IMHO he is not addressing audiophile preferences in his posts, but mostly performance.
 

dminches

Well-Known Member
Oct 22, 2011
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IMHO it goes the other way - audiophiles can learn a lot from Fred Thal, considered by any one in the business as being one of top experts in Studer A80 and A820 matters (another one is Andreas Kuhn). IMHO he is not addressing audiophile preferences in his posts, but mostly performance.

That's the difference. We know we can learn from Fred but I don't see any of us complaining that he is just a technician. In fact, we often reach out to people like Fred to better understand stuff. Conversely, Fred seems to have an issue with audiophiles. Big difference to me.
 
Jan 18, 2012
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Drobak Norway
just to clearify:
isn´t the azimuth adjustment the head alignment in the vertical plane vs the tape travel?
so if azimuth is adjusted on a machine, it shouldn´t be necessary to adjust each time you want to play a different tape?
or am I off the track completely?
best
Leif
 

dminches

Well-Known Member
Oct 22, 2011
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just to clearify:
isn´t the azimuth adjustment the head alignment in the vertical plane vs the tape travel?
so if azimuth is adjusted on a machine, it shouldn´t be necessary to adjust each time you want to play a different tape?
or am I off the track completely?
best
Leif

You would be adjusting the azimuth in the play deck to match that from the record deck.

I can tell you from my Nakamichi Dragon experience, the deck would automatically adjust the azimuth to match that of the deck in which the tape was recorded.
 

Mike Lavigne

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 25, 2010
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I think most of us audiophile, low techie, tape lovers have this expectation that if we purchase the right tapes that use the proper tape stock and are dubbed with the right EQ/bias (all that techie stuff) that we can listen blissfully without trying to delve into things we are not qualified to delve into.

we want plug and play. and then the questions become what is the upside to higher levels of fine tuning the tape path and EQ? as opposed to the downsides of messing up what might be 'good enough' settings all around to begin with? and then we have made all our tapes worse.

in a perfect world we might all have Fred or someone like him to train us or live next door. but we have to live in our world. is compromise a reasonable choice? and no doubt it might not be.
 

tony ky ma

Industry Expert
Aug 21, 2010
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Studer said this:

After we placed a battery power to the repro amp of A80 to replace the stock voltage regulated power supply and found improvement but in the first try same to record amp was disappointed , there was some radio broadcasting mixed into the recording too, we found long wire and bad routing caused problem and after shorter the wire and direct to the board then problem has gone, even A80 is so sensitive to the RF and I don't know what will happen to A810 and A820
tony ma
 

jdcolombo

Well-Known Member
Oct 29, 2017
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I think most of us audiophile, low techie, tape lovers have this expectation that if we purchase the right tapes that use the proper tape stock and are dubbed with the right EQ/bias (all that techie stuff) that we can listen blissfully without trying to delve into things we are not qualified to delve into.

we want plug and play. and then the questions become what is the upside to higher levels of fine tuning the tape path and EQ? as opposed to the downsides of messing up what might be 'good enough' settings all around to begin with? and then we have made all our tapes worse.

in a perfect world we might all have Fred or someone like him to train us or live next door. but we have to live in our world. is compromise a reasonable choice? and no doubt it might not be.

A reasonable compromise for those of us that don't have Fred next door is to have someone of Fred's caliber do a complete mechanical and electrical alignment of the deck, refurbishing as necessary, with azimuth set via an MRL test tape. Then you plug it in, sit back and enjoy your tapes.

In theory, every tape you play should have a set of test tones at the beginning for setting calibrated repro level and azimuth. You'd use the level tone to calibrate the repro level and the azimuth tone to calibrate repro azimuth. (Doing both of these things, by the way, is no harder than aligning a tonearm/cartridge for best LP playback; it does require a couple of tools - in my case, I use a Mac laptop with oscilloscope software to view a lissajous pattern for azimuth alignment. For repro level, I use the deck's own VU meters). But none of the tapes I own have such tones (I don't own any of Ed Pong's tapes (yet); my understanding is that his tapes have a 1K test tone at the beginning for adjusting repro level, since he records at +4 levels. Not sure if he has an azimuth tone). True master tapes do - the recording engineers record them as a matter of course before starting the main recording session so that a reproducer playing the master can be precisely aligned for that particular master tape. But I don't own any true master tapes; what I own are master tape dubs, some dubbed directly from the master, some from a mixdown master or a safety master. So everything I have is either second or third generation, not a true master tape. What I rely on is the fact that my tape sources align their machines with MRL test tapes; therefore, if my machine has its azimuth set properly using an MRL tape, it should be good to go. There may be minute variations, but I'm simply not going to obsess over that, and without test tones I can't do anything about it anyway.

If your machine has been properly aligned by a good tech using an MRL test tape, don't obsess and just enjoy the fantastic sound quality!

John C.
 
Last edited:
Jan 18, 2012
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Drobak Norway
totally agree
I have a pro that comes and adjusts azimuth, phase etc.... the rest I do myself
I only have SMs or 1. gen copies. all my SMs have 3 test-tones 1K/10K and 100Hz and once in a while I check freq , but I mainly use the MRL tape if I´ve swapped repro boards or anything else that might influence things
however both my A80s are very stable once aligned...
best
Leif
 

Edward Pong

Industry Expert
Jun 24, 2013
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A reasonable compromise for those of us that don't have Fred next door is to have someone of Fred's caliber do a complete mechanical and electrical alignment of the deck, refurbishing as necessary, with azimuth set via an MRL test tape. Then you plug it in, sit back and enjoy your tapes.

In theory, every tape you play should have a set of test tones at the beginning for setting calibrated repro level and azimuth. You'd use the level tone to calibrate the repro level and the azimuth tone to calibrate repro azimuth. (Doing both of these things, by the way, is no harder than aligning a tonearm/cartridge for best LP playback; it does require a couple of tools - in my case, I use a Mac laptop with oscilloscope software to view a lissajous pattern for azimuth alignment. For repro level, I use the deck's own VU meters). But none of the tapes I own have such tones (I don't own any of Ed Pong's tapes (yet); my understanding is that his tapes have a 1K test tone at the beginning for adjusting repro level, since he records at +9 levels. Not sure if he has an azimuth tone). True master tapes do - the recording engineers record them as a matter of course before starting the main recording session so that a reproducer playing the master can be precisely aligned for that particular master tape. But I don't own any true master tapes; what I own are master tape dubs, some dubbed directly from the master, some from a mixdown master or a safety master. So everything I have is either second or third generation, not a true master tape. What I rely on is the fact that my tape sources align their machines with MRL test tapes; therefore, if my machine has its azimuth set properly using an MRL tape, it should be good to go. There may be minute variations, but I'm simply not going to obsess over that, and without test tones I can't do anything about it anyway.

If your machine has been properly aligned by a good tech using an MRL test tape, don't obsess and just enjoy the fantastic sound quality!

John C.
I actually record at +4 db which is 396 nW/m not +9 as stated here...
Ed
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Everyone should have a good collection of MRL tapes. Like the above poster said, setting levels and azimuth is not hard. Nick's pre fortunately comes with every adjustment you would need.


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tony ky ma

Industry Expert
Aug 21, 2010
630
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Whitby Ontario Canada
For a general R2R consumer to enjoy pure analogue sound of music in play back, the most important things for them to do is often clearing heads' surface and tape path too and demagnetize heads . a demagnetizer will not cost too much money than a set of test tape but can give a great help in sound quality
tony ma
 

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