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

[Brian Gaff]

I'm in SW London with no transport as blind can't drive!

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Its a rather specialist job doing tape decks from mostly companies that do no longer make the beasts so have no spares. If you look up the US sites that do it you can easily spend 1000 dolars for one that probably cost 300 dolares in the first place!

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Hi, well I suggest to see the issue some of the doubters download

install it, turn off their monitor and unplug their mouses and see how they get on.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Thanks, I'll have a look on that one. Brian

[Bob Eager]

I've been playing with NVDA quite a bit recently. We have a blind student starting their degree next year, and that's what he uses.

It's very interesting.

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

High speed REVOX full track what else, and IIRC a couple of Neumann's or AKG Capacitors in a simple crossed pair...

[Mentalguy2k8]

Much like those Usenet discussions where some dolt insists on top-posting all the way through it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Full track Revox? Never seen one of those...;-)

Snag is quite a lot of the stuff I've had to transfer has been recorded using the supplied mic with the recorder. Usually crystal or cheap moving coil. Level set on a magic eye. You get the picture?

[charles]

I've still got a ½track A77 in the loft.

I recently had to transfer a privately made LP to cassette - fun getting the scratches out.

[Steve Firth]

charles wrote: [snip]

Audacity and a lot of patience will do that.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Strictly speaking, stereo. A true 1/2 track has a wider guard band between tracks to give better separation. Don't think Revox ever made one.

A full track is a mono machine that uses all the width of the tape. All the early pro machines were that. And some still in use in TV well into the '70s.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Much more fun to transfer to 1/4" and cut the clicks out with a razor blade. Done it lots of times. ;-)

[meow2222]

Have drive belt suppliers really dried up? With cassette decks, if all else fails one can always use stationery rubber bands. Not good practice, but i n most cases they last years (some don't).

If a pinch roller is just evenly worn rather than damaged, shimming whateve r determines its position can often get it to engage reliably. One way to s him is to tie iron wire on, various diameters are available, and its easily cut off in future. If shimming with epoxy, include some bits of metal, eg a wire clipping, to make it wear better.

NT

[Dave Liquorice]

Editing cassette, rather you than me...

Aye, and after a dabble with Audacity the other week I think I'd be far quicker with the razor blade. How can you find the correct point when you cant hear "the sound scrubbing past the head"? Lots of tedious zooming on the jerky waveform display I guess.

I did find another DAW (Reaper I think) that did give you "head scrubbing" but couldn't work out how to set the in and out points exactly, they kept jumping to a regular mark. Don't think I managed to make an edit at all in Reaper.

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Full track stereo or Twin track perhaps;)..

Indeed;(...

[Steve Firth]

Experience. Just as experience lets you listen to high speed gabble and find the point of interest where someone who hasn't done it before will hear only noise, experience lets you spot the waveform that corresponds to the bit you are after. Clicks and pops are actually quite easy to see in a waveform.

[Steve Firth]

Yes, I've done it that way in the past. I don't look forward to going back to it. In Audacity you can choose to interpolate between the two samples that are "good" which keeps the timings the same and is inaudible to most - I'd say all - listeners. YMMV because you know how to do it professionally and I just piss about trying to rescue the vinyl and shellac recordings that I don't want to lose.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I hate them for the same reason, and that I find the user interface doesn't suit me, and that I can't quickly scan many hundreds of threads to find the one or two I'm interested in.

Usenet provides me just the raw content, and I get to choose which of very many applications I use to access it, and they're all in one place with the same interface.

[RobertL]

You can still get parts for some of them. Here's someone selling spare belts for the Tandberg 3321x (which I have).

Robert