Studer a807.. FINALLY!! Master Tapes and Legal Matters... How Grey is this area?

You can find some sources for taped music here at the forum, some options are of course Tape Project, Quinton Records, Opus and eBay.

Ooopss, I was forgetting our Tony Ma here

Hxt1 said:

What is the official status of these tapes? are they 'legal'? I'm not so much worried about the classical titles, as they are mostly so old that licensing rights etc. have expired long ago.... I'm wondering about stuff like, The Beatles, Doors,Crosby Stills Nash, Miles Davis, and the more 'famous' or 'popular' artists and titles? Can I get in trouble for possessing these tapes?Harv

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Only if you try to sell them or make money off of them. People rip CD's and trade files all the time. You don't see the police knocking on their doors.

Ok I give.... what's the new habit? Have you given up on tape altogether?

Hxt1 said:

Ha!! Ok I should have specified:
I'm keeping the Studer, selling the other decks and factory tapes.. My new habit is 15ips safety master dupes!
I need to sell off extraneous gear and get an outboard tape preamp for the Studer now....

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Hi Hxt1
I think you are on the right track, once you up grade your level can not looking back, like my PR99, it was much better after modified, but it is on the side for long time, it is not easy to sell it because it had been modified, the only way I can keep it for future is convert it to 4 track for those 7.5 ips pre recorded tape which I still have some of my favor players, but do not listen it with 15 ips 2 track at the same time, maybe can combine listening with vinyl
tony ma

Hxt1 said:

Yeah, well MY pr99 (thread: 99 problems) is 'modded' with the AJ mods, but my capstan motor stopped working, a local tech offered his services, then refused to work on it because it had been modded... Weird, considering he jumped on the thread itself to offer help... Sigh.
!

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I don't want to start a flame war here, but I was the tech that offered to look at the PR99. To qualify, I've worked on 100s of RTR machines, primarily lower end consumer units below the level of what people on this forum are using, but I certainly know my way around RTRs, both mechanically and electronically, and own the calibration equipment to tweak bias and align heads, etc.

Now when I got Hxt1s Revox, I noticed that two RCA jacks had been 'installed' on the chassis where two DIN connectors used to be. The RCA jacks were the 'pro' type that had a solid thread on them, slightly larger than the hole for the original DIN jack. I also noticed that one of the RCA jacks was installed at an angle, which made no sense to me. It did, once I popped the cover on the Revox.

As per Hxt1's post, he said that he'd documented all of the modifications done to the machine. That may be so, but here are some of the highlights of the unit:

-it didn't appear that a drill was used to drill out the correct hole size for the RCA jacks. Rather, the metal of the chassis was simply bent out to accommodate the jack. That's why the one was mounted at an angle, due to the bent metal around the chassis.
-the wires that were connected to the RCA jacks were cut off the DIN connectors, and the DIN connectors with the remaining wires were dangling loose in the chassis.
-there was an 'experimenter's' type PC board wired in the top left corner of the chassis, with mystery wires running to other boards. This board was poorly soldered, and was held to the wiring harness with one wire tie. No screws, no solid mounting.
-there were some capacitors added to the foil side of the capstan speed control. These caps were far too large for the board, and to fit the caps in between the speed control PC board and a board above it, the speed control board was bent with the caps squished between the boards.
-other sundry wires were spliced mid-air, with copious amounts of electrical tape used for the splice.
--other wires were cut, and left dangling.

So gentlemen, as a tech, I pride myself in my work. I'm one of a select handful of board level techs in Vancouver, never mind in BC that still works on vintage audio equipment. I generally have no problems with mods and tweaks... if they are done well. In this case, I had opened a veritable rats nest of very poorly executed mods that 'worked for a couple of days and died'. To properly repair this deck, I would first have to unmod the set to make sure the stock deck worked properly, and then re-install the mods with proper capacitors and a clean-up of the dangling PC board, etc. With a bunch of cut wires, this would take a number of hours to do, far more than I had expected the job to take, and never mind that a hacked deck like this to me is always compromised in terms of reliability.

I politely called Hxt1 and explained that there was no way I wanted to work on the deck based on the condition described above. My recommendation was for him to find another working PR99, get the mods done in a professional manner, and use this deck as a parts unit. I must say, I'm very surprised to see him post his above quoted comment. His last explanation of the mods done (by someone else, he claimed) is that they were simply tacked in temporarily to see if they worked, then 'someone else' was going to clean them up later.

BTW, he also brought me a Sony TC-766 deck that he'd bought locally on CL. I saw the deck on CL, read the problems with it, and passed on buying it. The deck worked.. until Hxt1 slipped with a meter probe and 'must have blown a fuse or something'. I did repair that deck, but it took 4 hours worth of work and a handful of parts to completely rebuild the 24 volt power supply that had blown.

To everyone else, be very careful about how you mod your equipment, or more importantly, if you send your equipment out to someone else, make sure the person is competent to do the mods. In my opinion, his PR99 is toast due to the mods. I do have pictures if this thread is going to take on new life....

Hxt1 said:

I'll clean and demag my a807 before giving it a whirl.
Wondering: is it best to get xlr to rca adapters or hardwire the outputs to rca jacks?
Also.., any quick 'mods' i could perform to wake up the stock output repro electronics?
Next up: Beatles Abbey Road!!!
(Drool)!!

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After reading what your tech said about your PR-99, I would stay far away from any "quick mods' and the person who performed them for you as they obviously have no idea what they are doing. Somebody trashed your PR-99 doing some "quick mods."

His tech already gave him some great advice: Buy another deck that hasn't been hacked and keep the butchered unit for spare parts (the ones that haven't been mangled yet).

Here is my take on this. You might have told the guy your deck was 'modded,' but I bet you didn't tell him it was hacked by Tommy 10 thumbs and his roll of plumber's solder. One look inside of that mess would be all any good tech would need to see before they buttoned it up and washed their hands of it. No one would want their work to be associated with that mess. You have to protect your reputation. The problem I see here is that someone completely unqualified/untrained/zero knowledge of electronics or even how to drill a hole was allowed to hack up your deck. Bottom line is don't do that again. Don't think you can do things that you have never been trained to do. It's much cheaper to pay a pro to do a job right the first time then to hack up a perfectly good deck and then take it to a tech so he can try and fix all of your mistakes. And in this case what you found out was that the hack job was so incredibly bad the tech doesn't even want to touch the mess.

Hxt1 said:

As far as the Studer goes (and all r to r's for that matter) no, I won't be performing any 'mods' myself! I'll find a competent tech first, I'm not even going to tap the heads myself on that machine!
Cleaning and lubricating (where safe) is as far as it goes.
I think the Arian Mods for the PR99 are pretty straightforward, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to repopulate those boards. As far as mounting RCA jacks, yes, they were mounted properly, I do own a set of step drills, and one of my skills is cosmetic restoration. Metal, wood, plastic. It's part and parcel with my former job in the film industry (creating Props.. On set)
That machine had been crammed into the road case by the 'tech' I took it to prior to Curt, and the RCA's were skewed.
I'm simply stating that anyone, anyone in the world can read my thread, and plainly see that I had already attempted mods on the deck prior to the '99 problems' I was having. For someone to offer their services on the same thread, then state that they don't work on modded machines, does it make sense to you? Wouldn't you READ the thread first to get up to speed? No, you wouldn't ?
I guess I just took that for granted!
Oops, my bad!
Also, I realize this site is populated by techs, writers, and commercial businessmen. I'm none of the above. I'm a person who enjoys music, and playing with audio gear. The only way for me to get access to 'What's Best' is : scour garage sales, Craigslist etc, and : Do it Myself!
My apologies to everyone offended by my complaint, but I don't like having my time wasted.
As far as the rest, I never claimed to be a tech, more like a horse trader/ tinkerer.
Good day.
If we can get back on topic that would be fantastic btw.
Thanks.

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Get another PR99 (there's a lot around) and send it to Arian and let him convert it into his ATR-10. It's a very nice machine.

http://sonorusaudio.com/ATR10_FIF7.html