Anyone have one of these? Was cruising for some tapedecks again and found out that new ones are actually fucking made!?
According to one article, these babies cost somewhere around 10-15k € and up… But sure would be purty! And I bet these would sound just as good as the venerable Studers, if not better.
I hope economies of scale will eventually bring affordable highend reel-to-reel tappe machines back. We got pretty much everything else thats retro already, like vinyl cutters entering kickstarter and the like… Ok, Moog One aint cheap either. Guess some people could actually afford these.
Oh how nice it would be if reel-to-reel came back.
However, don’t pin your hopes on these guys, have you checked their website? It’s a super-luxury item designer company and nothing they make is remotely affordable. Reading the post I was wondering where one would get tapes these days. Ballfinger offer an 8 track compilation tape made especially for them by some label, and it costs €195 That shit better sound like a MF and make you levitate while you listen too. Still not sure where to get blanks though.
Maybe that other German guy (you know, last name also starts with B and ends with ER) will make us Studer Clone.
getting blanks is easy, new tape is still being made. Even Thomann sells blank new tape.
As much as I like the way Uli’s changed his companys’ product portfolio, not sure if we are going to see a Behri tapedeck anytime soon. These are precision mechanical engineering beasts, and possibly not easy to manufacture cheaply.
And while ballfinger seems like a blingy svenko hilyfe brand, the fact of the matter remains that serious tape decks ARE expensive af. I recall Studer A807 mk II’s costing something like 10,000-15,000€ back in the day when boradcasting companies used those decks for their daily grind. These seem priced about the same. Nonetheless, I’d hope modern manufacturing tech could at least halve that price while still retaining the same quality, assuming large enough batches were made?
Somehow this is one come-back I don’t see happening. Like you say, these things will always be be expensive to make, hard to maintain (when have recently done a bias callibration?), and have high marginal cost-of-use (tape). Even if Tascam/Fostex/Revox went back to making these and cut the cost by 50% or more, it is still one hugely expensive 2-track. Consider what else €5K buys you these days, I think this will remain an item for seriously well-off and nostalgic types (which I hope to become some day myself )
That shit better sound like a MF and make you levitate while you listen too. Still not sure where to get blanks though.
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