OT Who renovates reel to reel tape decks in the UK these days?

I'm looking for either a working quarter track stereo hi fi deck or somone to fix my old tandberg as I want to run through some tapes and see if they have anything worth keeping on them.

any ideas? I've been searching, plentey of people in the US doing it at high cost, but nobody here who looks reputable, ie is not just an unkown on ebay.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff
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Someone on the UK Vintage Radio tape-recording sub-forum might be able to help

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Owain

Reply to
Owain

Hmm,a forum, well thereby hangs the problem. I find forums very hard to use. Does it have a nasty type in from the picture human detector on it I wonder? But that is only half the issue. I gave up on Freecycle due to this discriminatory practice as the audio one is almost impossible to use as well. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

I've read the OP's objection to Forums several times and cannot understand either it or how he thinks specialist forums differ from this one.

Personally I've always found specialist forums very helpful, and very tolerant of people who quite clearly join just to ask one question.

Rob

Reply to
robgraham

Unless I've missed something, I thought the objection was the use of Capcha in the registration process, which requires one not to have a visual impairment. I certainly agree that the audio version is impossible to use.

Reply to
Nick

You are aware Brian is blind, aren't you? He uses a screen reader, which I imagine gets very confused by the mountains of irrelevant s**te that forums put on the screen.

One of the 37 reasons that forums suck.

That'll be 38, then.

Reply to
Huge

In message , Huge writes

I know this is d-i-y but surely some kind soul who knows something about tape decks could join, pose the problem and feed any useful answers back to Brian?

Reply to
Tim Lamb
[top posting for you Brian]

There's a guy on sci.electronics.repair who has posted there for many years. He seems to repair mainly older and vintage stuff and has come up with some clever fixes for kit where parts are no longer available.

He posts as N_Cook, email diverse AT tcp DOT co DOT uk

Has a website at

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Site is mainly text, so should be OK for you

Might be worth dropping him a line.

Mike

En el artículo , Brian Gaff escribió:

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

Well I have a Teac in the loft but whether it is working or not I don't know.

Giving us a clue as to what is wrong with it might help.

That's why I still have my Teac, one day I'll get the tuit. Difference is I know I have stuff I want to keep.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

well I used to work on audio. What exactly IS the problem, Brian?

I have to say that once I was called upon to recover some recordings made on WIRE. The wire recorder was no longer functioning and featured valves, but the motors ran and the wires ran past the head..I simply took the output direct from the head into a graphic equaliser and transferred it all to cassette tape.

So if the Tandberg still is capable of running tape past the head, you are halfway there.

Also reel-to-reel recorders appear from time to time on Ebay and are not expensive.

£150 will net you a fully refurbed one, or less for ones in dubious condition.

Finally a lot of places PROBABLY offer a 'tape to memory stick' type service.

But I know what you mean.. I have a load of 120 negatives and 35mm slides and negs that I dearly want to get around to scanning..this old stuff neednt be thrown away IF you can get it into digital form.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Even without visual impairment 2 out of 3 of them are impossible!

The signal to noise is generally considerably better in moderated or by invitation only forums. The PITA is having to go and look there.

The OP could help a lot by describing where in the country he is based as repair shops tend to be rather local. I suspect (though have not checked) that Lintone audio will (for a price) if you ask nicely:

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They would certainly do it if they had sold you the kit.

Regards, Martin Brown

Reply to
Martin Brown

I have a working 1/4tk machine. And half track too. Speeds from 1 7/8 ths to 15 ips.

Last time I did some transfers to CD as a favour, I was told the results were very poor. Whereas it was the original tapes which were very poor - the transfer was excellent. ;-)

Sadly, what was once sort of acceptable as an amateur recording many years ago doesn't stand up well today - when kids can produce a perfectly reasonable 'hi-fi' sound on their bedroom computer.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Thanks, Huge - I wasn't. My apologies, Brian.

Rob

Reply to
robgraham

You could ask a local charity shop to contact you if they get offered one, which doubtless they would normally redirect to the tip. One charity shop, Red Cross IIRC, is actively requesting electronic stuff. Or some council ti ps themselves set saleable things aside. Explaining exactly what you want m ay be the difficult bit.

I have some tapes myself which just may contain recordings of my late paren ts/grandparents that I'd like to check out one day.

Somewhere in the loft I have a magnetic disk recorder (dictaphone), and som e disks of correspondence between a grocery distributor and local shops tha t I must play with sometime.

Chris

Reply to
chrisj.doran%proemail.co.uk

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

I've still got some tapes of an old steam driven fairground organ recorded in the open air and some other stuff from many years ago and when replayed everyone who has heard them is impressed at just how good it does sound unlike what people are becoming used to, i.e. low bit rates, too much audio processing tiny small headphones and the like!,.....

As to Brian's original question yes some of this can be done but often on consumer grade stuff its the problem of getting such as drive belts and some other specialised parts like pinch rollers that can be problematic.

You if you can't DIY need to find someone who is a recorder enthusiast as commercially most all of the time its a non starter these days....

Reply to
tony sayer

For a start, this is *not* a forum. It's a newsgroup. Text only, no pictures or binaries, and you may like to search for "usenet" on google to find out what a newsgroup is.

Newsgroups can be used fairly easily using a text to speech program, whereas the spaghetti html code on most forum pages means that a screen reader can't be used, and the only way to use them is via a visual interface, which is not an option for Brian.

Yes they are all that, but if you want to get removed from the forum quickly, try answering a question where you know the answer, especially if your knowledge differs from the opinions of the moderators.

To Brian, if we were closer, I have an Akai 3 speed, 4 track machine, but I am in Stoke-On-Trent, unfortunately. If they are on reels bigger than seven inches, I know someone with a Revox, but he's a touch busier than I am.

Reply to
John Williamson

The OP lives in South West London, IIRC.

Reply to
John Williamson

Oh I know 1/4" tape could give excellent results. Sadly, too many worried about the cost of tape so used slow speeds - and 1/4 track. And didn't have much of an idea about how to use a microphone - which in any case was often poor in itself.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I'm reading on a reader not on google. It is the presentation in web format which is often the killer for forums for the blind. Every one seems to have a different arrangement of buttons all to be found and navigated to, and all the text has to be typed in to whatever editor they provide, which may or may not be easy to use with a screenreader. Hence I use this client for usenet. I simply could not use it through Google Gropes excuse for an interface.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

See what I said before. I think its more than just the type in thingy, its because all the different forums have different functions and one has to find them and figure out how to use them each time.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

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