Modern day tape players / recorders

Friends,

I’m googling but coming up short. If I want a decent modern day tape recorder / player, where do I find them? Are they still made, by anyone, at all?

Amazon (.co.uk) have some tape recorders/player - more of the personal style. When you say decent do you mean pro tape deck?

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Reel to reel? I think used is your best bet. And you can find people to maintain them too. I think you can still get new media, 1/4 inch tape i mean, although i wouldn’t expect that to be available for too long.

I haven’t spliced tape in a few years but there is something very satisfying doing things the ‘old’ way.

Thanks. Nah, good enough to play back tapes and do it well, like a serious Walkman for the amateur who enjoys quality. Not for studio purpose or anything.

I’m buying tapes from a few Bandcamp artists and want to be able to listen to them.

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I use an Onkyo TA-RW311 that does a great job on the bandcamp cassettes. I found it used at my local record store, but there’s likely one’s on ebay.

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Which reminds me of this (watch the top video if you haven’t seen the Tape ScrubBoard yet):

http://jeremyseanbell.com/scrubboard/video.html

I’m not sure how far Jeremy has gotten with this but it’s seems like a fun retro thing, in slightly new way. This instead of an Octatrack? (OK i guess not, but it would be fun anyway.)

Added: New video – THIS guy is so amazing!!


There are more videos too.

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Thanks, will check it out.

Never heard of this. But I love this guy now.

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A few years ago I picked up a Marantz PMD510 on ebay for about $40, I think these were about 10x that when they were new. It was in like new shape when I got it. Its old but works and sounds fantastic. Only down side is that its big and heavy, not too much of a problem for me because I have it in a rack…

Just checked ebay and they’re currently going for about $150… There are single deck models that are much cheaper.

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TASCAM are still making pro tape recorders.

I have 4 202mkvi units in my rack.

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If you buy something HiFi from the 80s/90s you’ll do alright, they were made very well. Pioneer / Marantz / Onkyo / AKAI / Nakamichi are good to look out for, I got a great pioneer one for €45 on eBay from a great seller called “hifisecondhand”. Happy hunting

Also bonus points if the player has tape head monitoring, so if you do decide to make your own cassette you can listen to the tape as it’s being recorded to (and also therefore make your own tape delay if you route the audio back in again)

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Thanks, all. Many good leads here.

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I bought a second hand pioneer deck on eBay after a label released by last ep on cassette and realised i coukdnt play it… cassette mafe the whole thing sound super nice and smooth. Deck cost about 25£. Ive been using it to warm things up inyo my OT since i got it.

Bought a crap walkman too that has a rubbish motor that does wonderous things to pitch and speed.

Shameless plug here is my ep cassette www.pikduo.bandcamp.com

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Sony WMD6C or TCD5M are probably amongst the best portable cassette recorders you can buy, very good sound quality and pretty reliable, very well built, parts still available as they were widely used by professionals for years. You might pay a bit more but they are well worth it IMHO.

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…or with your tape monitoring(three-head recorders only) on you could send the mix right back to your DAW as a mix down. No need to rewind and listen/copy again in realtime afterwards.
Lovely:yum:

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That first one keeps popping up as one of the classic pro choices of portable tape recording. I read somewhere a few reel-to-reel guys even replaced their rig for this one.

Another slightly crafty way to get a lot of bang for your buck is to go the portastudio route, be aware though that a lot of the better models run at twice the speed of a regular deck, however some have both speeds either by way of a switch or by a pitch control potentiometer.

If you want to go the hifi route then this site has a ton of info, you can search by attributes like hxpro, 3 head or whatever http://www.vintagecassette.com/

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https://www.kjell.com/se/sortiment/ljud-bild/digitalisera-ljud-bild/kassettband/plexgear-soundsaver-mc-usb-kassettbandspelare-p33208

:grin:

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Ha :slight_smile: I’m almost tempted to try this one :slight_smile:

You a Swede, @Icoustik? Do we know each other? :slight_smile: