Open Reel Tape Decks

an unedited photo from the Minolta SR1 on Portra 400

Vinyl music is beautiful.  It's rich and tonal, and one of the few true recordings of sound, but sooner or later the needle will shake the groove with too high highs and other such things.  In reality, the shortcomings of vinyl that can't be chocked up to crappy equipment is rather unnoticeable to most people.  But they were there, so a different side of analogue music was born.  Magnetic tape.  Tape had a much greater tonal range than Vinyl, even though some records boasted massive capabilities (these types were only playable on specific frequency decoders) magnetic tape still took hold as the true High Fidelity sound of the later twentieth century.  It hasn't received nearly the same resurgence as vinyl for some reason though.  No new albums come out, no new equipment, yet here they sit in all their glory rotting away.

Now I should mention I am talking specifically about quarter inch tape.  Compact cassettes are all too thin and all too slow moving to hold perfect sound.  They can be pretty good, especially metal tapes, but the reel to reel systems that use quarter inch moving at double (3 3/4ips) to four times (7.5ips) the speed produce much better sound.  Of course you can retrofit yours to play 15 ips instead of the 7.5 professional standard, but tapes like that cost around $400.

About a month ago, I came across a Sony Tc-560.  It was sold in the 1960s as part of a home stereo system.  I liked it because it allowed me to record stereo tracks one at a time, something that could be fun to record music of my own on.  I could tell from the listing photos that it needed a power cable, and was probably dropped one too many times.  Nevertheless, $40 was a steal (plus $55 shipping, ouch).  When it arrived, it was more than apparent that it was in dire need of work, more than I had anticipated.  I was more accustomed to fixing typewriters, and electronics always seemed like too big of a beast for me to handle.  When I pulled it out of the box, I was intrigued to see that the back cabinet wasn't even bolted down.  I ended up having to modify it with washers and pocket screws to get it to mount again, and even so only three out of the four holes would accept a screw.

the power supply I made

hunting for new screws

Obviously the first thing I had to do was get some power through it to see if it would even power up.  There are four pins on a proprietary power plug from Sony.  They are labeled with two AC pins and two DC pins.  Plug AC into the DC and you get a homemade smoke bomb.  I managed to take the powercord off an old Smith Corona T5 Electric typewriter.  The same machine I pulled the script typeface from for my Royal.  That typewriter has been the gift that keeps on giving.  Using the connector prongs from my old Windows XP PC, I was able to securely connect the non grounded electric cable to the outlet and in turn to the machine.  I flipped the on switch and moved into the play mode, and it fired right up.  I thought I was in business at this point, but I was sorely mistaken.  This was three weeks ago.

I couldn't really test anything until I got some tape for it.  I cleaned the tape path with some rubbing alcohol to start, but my knowledge on what to do (if anything) was very limited.  I did end up finding a lot of help through the Reel to Reel tape groups on Facebook.  Of course one of the immediate things I noticed was the Aux input and speaker output.  Both of these required standard audio RCA cables.  I only had composite video cables for old TVs.  It wasn't really an issue though.  I had a standard 3.5mm stereo jack, and I was able to solder together the red and white RCA connector to it.  RCA cables have a center positive and a negative collar.  Stereo 3.5mm jacks have a left + at the tip, right +, and then M- or neutral.  Composite headphones with either a volume rocker or a microphone have a fourth ring but those don't usually work well with older systems.  I took the Negative collar lead wires and soldered them both together so they met the M- pin on the stereo jack.  Than I soldered the corresponding leads for right and left audio to their respective wires, and shrink-tubed the whole thing.  In the end I was left with a mono audio RCA to stereo 3.5mm adapter.  A week later I ended up finding the identical premade cable at ACE so I just got another one to use for speakers.  One in, one out.

About a week later I got a roll of vintage Ampex tape in the mail.  The first good bit of it seemed to be some family dinner recording from the 70s, with the rest of the tape being blank.  It was sold for recording, but the tape was a joy to listen to.  One thing I noticed immediately was the tape itself was shedding.  I later learned that this is a common issue on some tapes, where the composition of the glue that holds the oxide to the plastic deteriorates.  It left some brown powdery residue all over the tape path. 

a little hard to see the residue

I could tell that this machine had a lot of life left in it, but when I went to try and record, the machine refused to erase and record more than some static pops and a brief moment of clarity.  I was not happy with that.  I knew the machine had been dropped, as the casing was a little busted, and the left VU meter was bent and out.  The record lights came on, audio went through the system just fine, and it played well too.  I even checked the head coils with my multimeter before being told it was most likely a blown transistor from the facebook group.  I don't know much about circuits, but I do know that replacing components is a massive pain in the butt.  I used a ton of Deoxit D5 on everything that could need it, and in the end, I had to pull the Bias Oscillator Board.

my treadmill (yes, this is important)

So why do I have a photo of the circuit board of my treadmill on an article about Reel to Reel and a blog about typewriters?  A few months ago, I was walking on the treadmill when I heard a pop, and everything came to a stop.  It was an old Pacemaster from the 90s, and had supported me for thousands of miles.  Every day, year after year.  Suffice to say I assumed the motor coil blew, and the display told me it was a speed sensor issue.  I opened it up a few days ago to check the motor coils (i had been very busy as of late) and after a lot of rooting around, my stupid and oblivious brain finally spotted the above.  In plain view, surrounded by soot, was a blown solder path in the circuit board.  A preliminary check off all the other components and the fuse told me that this was the only issue.  A build up of electrical resistance likely resulted in the thin open path to burst.  So I bridged it with a paperclip soldered in place and the treadmill has been fine since.

Well, I was rooting around just the same on the OSC board on the Sony.  Apparently no erase and no record means blown OSC.  I didn't see anything blown, and was about to give up when I once again noticed a very obvious problem.

Would you look at that.

I knew the unit had taken some hits, but this was quite a hit.  The mounting bracket for the outside casing had bent so far over, that it cracked off a portion of the OSC board.  There were only four connectors on the board, two for the LED that miraculously still worked, and another two mysterious paths.  A quick check on the schematic told me that the only things broken were these two solder paths.  I double checked the resistor shown on the schematic just to be sure, and it was intact.  Using two thin pieces of copper wire, I re soldered the connections back together and bent the mounting bracket straight.  I turned the machine around and put a tape on it.  A radio broadcast recording from the Netherlands.  I recorded Bohemian Rhasphody over it, played it back, and it worked beautifully. 

I must say I am very pleased with the machine itself.  It took a lot of trial and error, a lot of setbacks (ordering deoxit was a beast in itself) and a lot of time.  I think it paid off.  Several people told me to give up or hire a tech, but I figured I'd just sell it for parts if it came to that.  As of now, it is playing just fine, and recording just fine.  There really isn't anything else I'd want from it.

Pentax K1000 on Ektar 100