UHA Deck

[MylesBAstor]

Nice piece by Peter Breuniger from the Capital AudioFest on Greg Beron and United Home Audio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZhLO-F_ss

 

[rockitman]

So how do those decks sound compared to a king/cello setup ?

 

[MylesBAstor]

So how do those decks sound compared to a king/cello setup ?

Great question and wish knew the answer. Haven't heard them side-by-side or in a place that could reliably compare.

Once tried getting a deck from Greg for review but never worked out.

 

[U47]

RE: UHA deck based on Tascam BR-20

I own a stock BR-20 - a nice, reliable broadcast(BR) quality deck. This reminds me of the line Senator Benson used in the VP debates a few years back concerning VP Quayle(" Sir, you are no Kennedy"). For $10-$16K one could get a master recorder(Ampex ATR-102, Studer A80/820) and your choice of outboard electronics(K/C, DeHavilland, Doshi, Aria, Bottlehead) that would offer pride of ownership far outweighing a 'doctored' up BR-20 with celtic crosses galore. One thing in the UHA decks favor is that it is compact and light and turnkey(well, 3 things).

Sort of like comparing a Porsche GT-2 to a VW GTI

 

[Greg Beron / UHA]

​

Hi Rich,
Thank you for your feedback on regarding design choices on a UHA deck.
Any designer and manufacturer must have a clear concise “design objective”, mine was simple.

Offer a turnkey R2R deck offering the highest sound quality and reliability possible to an audiophile wanting to explore the new Master Tapes or recordings of his own. To accomplish this I needed a deck that fit certain parameters.

1.) Wife friendly looks, a deck that could reside in a living space and not be an eyesore. Early on I had customers complaining about the rack mount ears; that resulted in the optional Celtic logo side panels to hide the rack mount ears. If someone doesn’t like them don’t buy them, however I have sold 95% of my decks with them. We paint the decks in an automotive finish black, silver, red, or white. Surely one cannot fault a nice new paint job?
2.) The deck had to have a reliable and efficient transport, the BR-20 has a perfectly proper transport, and I have had no issues with it.
3.) It could not be as big or heavy as a washing machine; the deck may need to go up or down stairs without hiring piano movers or getting a hernia!
4.) It must be reliable. Fact is 40 or 50 year old decks ain’t.
5.) Didn’t care about the electronics in the deck or much about the heads because I was going to change all that.
6.) Must be available in sufficient quantities.
7.) Cannot deal with machining parts that are no longer available or scowering the world looking for used parts.

Enter the BR-20, it fit the bill with 1-7 above, was made from 1994-2004 and even has many parts available from Tascam.

When I started this project way back when, I bought a Studer A820 and an ATR 102 along with a Technics 1500 with unfortunate results.

Studer A810: Spent $$ in parts to get it running to factory specs, then the Capstain motor went, that was it, I couldn't provide a turnkey deck with that kind of reliability. Also couldn’t be peppered with EPROMS issues in the field.

ATR 102: Again a 40 or 50 yr old deck that was ridden hard and put away wet, electronics were pretty bad and the length of wire required to get from the heads to the preamp was an unacceptable design.
Not very good experiences in my book can't get parts worth a crap, 40 to 50 yr old mechanicals and poor electronics. Not to mention HEAVY!
Not much pride of ownership when it doesn’t work properly.

With the BR-20 I can still buy parts for from Tascam, the tape path is perfectly good and reliable, I change the PB and REC electronics / heads so what do I care that they are not very good. As far as design inherent in the deck, the wire from the tape head to the preamps is about 2" long, the preamps sit in their own metal compartments that shield them. In my experience running a long wire (a noise antenna) from a tape head to a head amp that may or may not have compatibility with the output or impedance of a particular tape head, just has to compromise the sound quality. Add that to a 40 or 50 yr old machine and your Porsche GT2 is really a 50 yr old Speedster with 91 HP against a Nissan GTR!!

Fact is we don’t just “doctor up” a BR-20, every part and process in the deck has been examined. We have gone through countless hours over in the last 6 years of experimentation and trial and error with circuit designs and cost no object pieces and parts to get the deck to this level of playback. The internal wire is even “cast” hyper pure silver that is double shielded with a woven Teflon braid, beautiful sounding wire, pretty too. We replace the switching FET’s between REC and PB with a dual ladder design (2 per CH) gold relays, same used in Conrad Johnson’s high end preamps. We install a dedicated audiophile torodial power transformer solely for the new dual mono preamps; we feed charge each gain stage with its own regulated power off the supply.

Since you haven’t heard the deck here are some comments from people that have, you may recognize some names.
I think the owners of a UHA deck feel a nice of pride of ownership considering all the accolades and five awards the deck has received…so far. Of course there is much more press on the web site, here are just a few I picked out.



THE ABSOLUTE SOUND MAGAZINE
Award for 'ANALOG SOURCES' 2012
"UHA's Greg Beron is nothing if not persistent. Each year he further perfects his 15ips reel-to-reel tape player (a highly modified Tascam unit), and each year his latest deck raises the bar on realism in stereo playback.
The most recent top-line version of the UHA-Q, the Phase9, is unquestionably Beron's best yet. With the right sources (i.e., select Tape Project tapes) it cannot be bettered by any other source, analog or digital.
The Absolute Sound March 2012 - Issue 221

Stereophile Magazine
Capital Audiofest—Day One
By John Atkinson • Posted: Jul 14, 2012
United Home Audio’s second system… sounded, in a word, magnificent, de Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat, from a Tape Project tape open-reel tape reproduced
with well-defined soundstage width and depth, uncolored mids, well-controlled lows,
and high frequencies that were optimally balanced for the large room.


September 2010
The Absolute Sound Magazine
The Tape Project and the UHA-HQ Tape Decks Review
By Jonathan Valin
I myself highly recommend the modified TASCAM decks from United Home Audio
which I gave a Golden Ear Award to in issue 202.
...on the best Tape Project titles,
it is without question the most realistic source component I've tried.
It is also exceedingly easy to use and a snap to setup.
...you will get more dimensional imaging, finer low-level resolution, somewhat truer timbres, simply phenomenal dynamics, astonishingly wide and deep soundstaging, and greater overall realism on select 15ips tapes, and on the best of them, such as the Arnold Overtures, you will, as I said above, get a sound that comes closer to the sound of a full orchestra in a real hall than any other recorded medium I've heard.

David Robinson, Positive Feedback Online, Audio Oasis Award Newport 2012
Just like last October at RMAF 2011, the sound in this room was arresting: superior RTR recordings from The Tape Project, Opus3, and others. ¼" half-track tapes in abundance… unmistakable reference-grade elegance on the source side, of a certainty!

David Robinson, Positive Feedback Online, Audio Oasis Award RMAF 2012
The results with the United Home Audio UHA Phase9 open reel tape deck and the Jolida Fusion preamp and monoblocks were really impressive.
There is always something very special about open reel tapes… this is where I started in audio, while still in high school…
and the overall effect was smooth, richly harmonic, dynamic, and commendably transparent.
(I have to admit that I am completely unfamiliar with this company and this tape deck, and had no time to dig in on it while at RMAF 2011.)
I sat there for a while, just soaking in the music. It was so good that I forgot to check the titles of the classical recordings that we were listening to!
The VR-5 AE's were providing rich, involving sound, with little to fault in terms of musical values. Reasonably compact speakers…
but full-range performance! This is the real thing, amigos…

RMAF 2011 - At a Snail's Pace by Mike WechsbergOver the three days I got to spend quite a bit of time in a few rooms. One of these was the room shared by Von Schweikert Audio and Jolida, Inc. I haven't been a fan of Von Schweikert speakers over the years, but the combination of VR-5 Anniversary Edition Loudspeakers with Jolida tubed electronics playing the Beethoven 9th Symphony on a United Home Audio open reel tape machine was spectacularly realistic and involving. The sound had great dynamic range and just the right blend of tonality, detail and spaciousness. I was exhausted at the end of the recording, just like I am whenever I hear this music in a concert hall. The equipment in this room was not cheap, but the cost was far from the most expensive setups at the show yet this room left me with one of the strongest impressions. Bravo to the folks who put this room together.

Jacob Heilbrunn The Absolute Sound RMAF 2011
But the most memorable cut for me was listening to Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” at United Home Audio’s room on a $17,000 Phase9 Tascam machine, …It sounded amazing.

Jim Hannon The Absolute SoundWhen the DL3 was coupled with the remarkable UHA-HQ Phase6 reel-to-reel deck and playing mastertape duplicates from The Tape Project, I was in sonic heaven!
The massed strings in Exotic Dances from the Opera were sumptuous and finely detailed, and rode on a cushion of air across a soundstage of such tremendous width and depth that it came surprisingly close to the dimensionality of my highly-modified reference preamplifier. The highs were naturally extended and balanced without any grain or forwardness , allowing the timbre of instruments like woodwinds to remain seductive yet lifelike; at the same time, the DL3 tracked the demanding dynamics swings of the music with aplomb.
When I listened to Dave Alvin on Blackjack David [TP-002]. his voice and guitar had such immediacy and palpability that I felt, at times, that I was listening to a live performance. It doesn't get much better than that! While the UHA-HQ deck is the best front end I've had in my system.

Scot Hull Part Time Audiophile.com
Martin Logan 5.1 surround system & The UHA Phase1 tape deck.
My favorite part of the demo were the stunning — and I’m not using the word lightly — stereo recordings from The Tape Project.
The one-off-master of Bill Evans may well have been the best reproduction I’ve ever heard, anywhere, of anything. It was breathtaking.

Stereo Times Lewis Dardick Capital Audiofest 2012
United Home Audio as in prior shows presented a very natural / realistic sounding system, which was likely attributable in large part to the front end I heard consisting of the
United Home Audio UHA-Q Phase9PB open reel tape deck ($14,500). I don't remember my old reels sounding nearly this good. But it made me think about reentering the tape
extravaganza. I am sure that it didn't hurt that the deck was being driven by the MBL 6010 ($26,500) and MBL 9007 amps ($21,400 ea) into MBL 116F speakers.
All in all I kept on thinking about how smooth the system sounded with a three-dimensionality close to live music.

 

[flez007]

I own a stock BR-20 - a nice, reliable broadcast(BR) quality deck. This reminds me of the line Senator Benson used in the VP debates a few years back concerning VP Quayle(" Sir, you are no Kennedy"). For $10-$16K one could get a master recorder(Ampex ATR-102, Studer A80/820) and your choice of outboard electronics(K/C, DeHavilland, Doshi, Aria, Bottlehead) that would offer pride of ownership far outweighing a 'doctored' up BR-20 with celtic crosses galore. One thing in the UHA decks favor is that it is compact and light and turnkey(well, 3 things).

Sort of like comparing a Porsche GT-2 to a VW GTI

View attachment 4955

I also own this deck, and willing to install better heads since mine has the original heads and, while it is modded to go direct from there, it is not compatible with the KC electronics.

 

[jonathanhorwich]

UHA Phase 11

I own a specially modified Studer 810, a Studer A820 with King Cello (rebuilt from the bolts up by the best tech I have ever encountered) and the Aria Ampex by Mike Spitz. At the recent Axpona Chicago show I used Greg Beron's new Phase 11. For those who were there and heard my master tape copies, you know how it sounded. It is impossible for me to know if it sounds better than my A820, which took two years to rebuild. Same with the Spitz Aria. But I will tell you this UHA is no joke. the sound was fabulous and the bass would appear to be better or as good as I've ever heard. In my work I need the big professional machines as I deal with old masters, etc. Hence my love affair with the 810 and A820 transports.

But were I a consumer, listening only for the pure pleasure and enjoyment of tape, I'd get one of these UHA Phase 11 (or cheaper model) machines in a split second. They aren't too big, they stand up vertically, they can look however I want them to look (I'd have mine in simple black or dark dark blue), and they sound fabulous. Perfect for the listener who isn't dealing with master tapes all day.

And for those who have Studers you know the original playback electronics do not sound very good. The record side is another matter. it is quite good. My Studer 810 (all basic parts replaced by my tech) makes a mean recording. But not so on playback, which I never use it for. (As a note the best recording machine I ever owned and used was a Stellamaster SP 8. Unbelievable.)

I am so glad someone is making a machine the basic consumer can buy and use to play back tape. I know a lot of people who could not stand having my big Ampex or Studer in their living space. Not to mention find one in any kind of operating shape. The UHA decks fill that need in my opinion. And their sound is at least excellent or better. What I heard at the show was stunning.

And here is my last statement for discussion. No one in the tape world has done what is being done in the audiophile world with preamps and amps. For at least 30 years manufacturers have been improving their products. So now I can name you probably 5 - 10 killer preamps and amps. Maybe more. And even speakers. Not so 30 years ago. But tape decks have not been given that repetitive treatment, until UHA. Every year the thing is going to get better and better. My 810 was never given years of research and development in terms of sound (the transport on the other hand is to die and nearly perfect). Some people are making up for that lack, like King and Doshi and Spitz. But we're just getting started. Hence I think what UHA is doing is fabulous and has a specific and beneficial place in all of reel to reel. And is probably helping spark and maintain interest in R2R for a certain type of public.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

Here is Jonathan's room from two weeks ago...

 

[rockitman]

Thank you for sharing your insights Jonathan. The UHA deck is very interesting indeed and certainly fills the audophile niche.

 

[rbbert]

Thank you Jonathon and Greg (despite your obvious bias I found yours an informative post). BTW Greg, you didn't expand on your experience with the Technics 1500, which many members here use (with significant modifications, of course)?

 

[rockitman]

Thank you Jonathon and Greg (despite your obvious bias I found yours an informative post). BTW Greg, you didn't expand on your experience with the Technics 1500, which many members here use (with significant modifications, of course)?

If I were to guess is that the internal electronic circuitry is so low in quality that no internal mods would suffice other than avoiding the electronics completely with an external pre and replacing the technics repro head with a better one, like Nortronics. The servo tape transport seems to be good.

 

[rbbert]

If I were to guess is that the internal electronic circuitry is so low in quality that no internal mods would suffice other than avoiding the electronics completely with an external pre and replacing the technics repro head with a better one, like Nortronics. The servo tape transport seems to be good.

But isn't that what is done with Doshi's (or King/Cello) preamps and the Nortronics head that many here use?

 

[flez007]

So how do those decks sound compared to a king/cello setup ?

Christian - I managed to recover my EAR deck again and compared it to the modified Technics/KC preamp - the later sounds a tad better, particularly in transparency and extended frequency response by a small margin.

 

[rockitman]

But isn't that what is done with Doshi's (or King/Cello) preamps and the Nortronics head that many here use?

yes, but my point is the UHA is a one box solution for excellent RTR sound. The Tascam is a much newer tape deck compared to the Technics. I would imagine the internals are far better on the whole to work with for internal modification.

 

[Frank750]

I heard the UHA at Axpona. It was fantastic!

 

[rockitman]

I heard the UHA at Axpona. It was fantastic!

You are the perfect candidate for this one box solution deck. No fuss, no muss.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Christian - I managed to recover my EAR deck again and compared it to the modified Technics/KC preamp - the later sounds a tad better, particularly in transparency and extended frequency response by a small margin.

my friend Andrew has my old EAR Technics RS-1700, which he compared directly to a Technics RS-1500/King Cello 'U47' brought over to his home, and Andrew preferred the EAR-Technics by a good margin. earlier Andrew had compared that same EAR RS-1700 directly to my Studer A-820/King Cello in my room and it was not close (in favor of my A-820/KC)......so it's hard to generalize about how stuff compares. there are simply so many varibles in how heads and retro electronics and even the preamp interface is set up in specific systems. and even specific King Cello's differ in some respects.

i do consider the EAR Technics as an excellent top to bottom modification.....he even includes his own EQ setting; it's hard to imagine a more qualified tape deck mod guy than Tim deParavicini. his gear is in the middle of lots of great recordings and re-issues we all own.

also; i've not heard a better sounding tape player than my A-820-King Cello (not that there are not better only that i've not heard one).

 

[flez007]

my friend Andrew has my old EAR Technics RS-1700, which he compared directly to a Technics RS-1500/King Cello 'U47' brought over to his home, and Andrew preferred the EAR-Technics by a good margin. earlier Andrew had compared that same EAR RS-1700 directly to my Studer A-820/King Cello in my room and it was not close (in favor of my A-820/KC)......so it's hard to generalize about how stuff compares. there are simply so many varibles in how heads and retro electronics and even the preamp interface is set up in specific systems. and even specific King Cello's differ in some respects.

i do consider the EAR Technics as an excellent top to bottom modification.....he even includes his own EQ setting; it's hard to imagine a more qualified tape deck mod guy than Tim deParavicini. his gear is in the middle of lots of great recordings and re-issues we all own.

also; i've not heard a better sounding tape player than my A-820-King Cello (not that there are not better only that i've not heard one).

agreed