braxus
06-22-2008, 09:15 PM
I got the itch to play around with some reel to reels today. After I did my scans of the tapes I put online here, I got my friends old Panasonic deck out of the crawl space. Its a 7 incher deck only, but it can do all 3 speeds. It also is showing its age as many of the switches, etc need work. But for playing around it can do the basics. I got out one of the pre-recorded reel to reels I got off Ebay. Harry Belafonte's Jump Up Calypso tape was put on. Its a 7.5 IPS tape from RCA. Great compilation of songs. I got it mostly because I love the song "Jump In the Line" which you might remember was used in the movie Beetlejuice at the end. Anyway it sounded not bad for an old tape. Not crystal clear highs, but the dynamics were there and as always I find with reel to reel tapes- strong bass. Good bass has to be one of the trademarks I find with reel to reel tapes. Also with the dynamics I heard from these tapes- it gave metal cassette tapes a run for their money. The punchiness of reel to reel is a strong point. So I got out one of those very old blank tapes which I got a while ago and was used before. I wasn't too worried about keeping what I put onto it, so I made a test complilation. Got out a Telarc CD. The tape I used was in a RCA's Red Seal tape box which has got to be from the early years of tape. It was a 2400 foot tape, but the reel itself I used looked different- so it was probably a different tape put in the RCA box. So on it went and the recording started. With this tape the high end was rolled off. Some parts you could just make out the high notes, but the clarity of this tape was low. It really thickened up the sound. Put on a Carpenters SACD which I use because I know it well and its sound. Again the highs were rolled off. Good soundstage and again low end with dynamics. Tried another CD. Same story. The bass was the best of the whole experience. These tapes can really take punchy music. Cassette seems to struggle in that area unless you are using the best metal tapes and Dolby. Next time I'll try a newer tape on the reel to reel and a better pre-recorded tape.