Vintage Teac 1230 Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck - 'They Don't Make'em Like That Anymore'

[Dennis D]

Had to open up my Teac deck - -
It wasn't even for 12 inch reels - this was 7 in.
It weighed 47 pounds - - I checked it twice. It sure seemed lighter when I bought. ( 1973 ) : )

Check out this strut - it reminded me of that Eiffel Tower movie I just watched....

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Oh yeah!

I bought a new high speed Crown SX724 in 1975 and used it for about 30 years before even trying digital recording. I loved it and built a floor to ceiling wall unit with a full height 19” rack in it to hold my electronics.

Once home digital recording was good enough, I sold the Crown while it was still worth decent money. I don’t miss the hassles of open reel recording, but I really miss seeing it in that gorgeous rack o’ goodies. When I replaced it in the rack with a monitor, I used a picture of it as the Home Screen and the screen saver.

[captmars]

I had two Teac 2340sx recorders---I used them in the 70's and 80's---I still think those old recordings had a warmer? sound--they compressed naturally---I prefer that sound they allowed. Kent

[Dennis D]

And according to several vintage re-sellers I called, they garner very little if any interest on the used market.........

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

And according to several vintage re-sellers I called, they garner very little if any interest on the used market.........

True enough. The barriers to entry in the open reel market are high. Start with tape, which is not easy to get and not inexpensive when you can. A 10 1/2" reel of RTM's last expensive tape is $100, and even a 7" reel is about $50 IIRC. There are very few people left who can repair a complex tape machine, and parts are hard to find. Jim Haines (the service manager at Crown for many years) opened an independent shop to maintain, restore, and sell Crown decks decades ago when they stopped making them, but I'm prtty sure that's long gone now. I don't know of any competent repair shop for TEAC, Crown, Ampex, Revox etc anywhere near Philadelphia. Tapes are perishable. The magnetic field prints through to the adjacent layers and you start to hear the crostalk after years of storage. The sound quality degrades with time if they're not stored properly. Capstan rollers get sticky and break up.

I had to mount a splicing block on a single rack space panel between the transport and the electronics, so I could deal with the inevitable breaks and edit tapes the old fashioned way. Rewinding a 101/2" reel took enough time to make fiddling with vinyl seem efficient. You couldn't find the exact spot you wanted without a very detailed index of the counter's reading at every way point of the recording. Etc etc.

The sound quality of a well recorded 15 ips tape remains one of the best listening experiences in audio. But truth be told, I don't miss doing it and I understand why even the best machines aren't worth very much today.

[Dennis D]

True enough. The barriers to entry in the open reel market are high. Start with tape, which is not easy to get and not inexpensive when you can. A 10 1/2" reel of RTM's last expensive tape is $100, and even a 7" reel is about $50 IIRC. There are very few people left who can repair a complex tape machine, and parts are hard to find. Jim Haines (the service manager at Crown for many years) opened an independent shop to maintain, restore, and sell Crown decks decades ago when they stopped making them, but I'm prtty sure that's long gone now. I don't know of any competent repair shop for TEAC, Crown, Ampex, Revox etc anywhere near Philadelphia. Tapes are perishable. The magnetic field prints through to the adjacent layers and you start to hear the crostalk after years of storage. The sound quality degrades with time if they're not stored properly. Capstan rollers get sticky and break up.

I had to mount a splicing block on a single rack space panel between the transport and the electronics, so I could deal with the inevitable breaks and edit tapes the old fashioned way. Rewinding a 101/2" reel took enough time to make fiddling with vinyl seem efficient. You couldn't find the exact spot you wanted without a very detailed index of the counter's reading at every way point of the recording. Etc etc.

The sound quality of a well recorded 15 ips tape remains one of the best listening experiences in audio. But truth be told, I don't miss doing it and I understand why even the best machines aren't worth very much today.

Ok, now I can admit it - I only opened it up to see if there were pieces I could remove to make it easier to lift. I luckily could remove that large motor and then the
' flywheel ' ? It looks like one piece milled aluminum, and weighs in at a pound and a half....

Anyway that worked ! : )

[Sam Sherry]

Some people who take joy in repurposing old tech.

My online pal Aaron built this lovely JCM800 in an old IMac box:

[sgosnell]

I still have my old Ampex sitting around, along with a bunch of tapes, but I haven't fired it up in a long time. Some years ago I found someone up near Chicago who had NOS parts for it, and I bought a bunch of wheels and other parts. The rubber on the wheels had degraded, and I replaced most of them. They may have degraded again, for all I know. Back in the '70s I bought vinyl albums, put them on tape, and many I never put on the turntable again. I suppose my kids will have to deal with all that stuff someday. But they need to pay for their raising somehow.

[oldane]

Ah yes - reel to reel tape decks. I still have a Bang & Olufsen somewhere in my basement. It's more than 30 years since I last used it. It could do track-on-track and I used it to do multitrack recordings back then before we got the digital machines.

[jazzloverfat]

Some people who take joy in repurposing old tech.

My online pal Aaron built this lovely JCM800 in an old IMac box:

i'm stealing this, it's actually kinda epic.

how difficult was it to keep it from shorting out with all that metal around it?
also, it's a Mac Pro chassis, not iMac

[garybaldy]

We used an old Brenell back in the day.

[GuyBoden]

We used an old Brenell back in the day.

[grahambop]

I inherited an Akai 4000DS reel-to-reel when I was a teen, it came in very useful for figuring out Jimi Hendrix solos (and later on, Wes Montgomery solos) by playing them back at half speed.

Also it could do rudimentary multitracking (bouncing sound-on-sound), I used to have some fun with that.

[Tom Karol]

Recorded a couple of demos on a Tascam 80-8 (8 tracks on 1/2" tape) back in the late 70's.

[Sam Sherry]

i'm stealing this, it's actually kinda epic.

Aaron is truly crafty in the best sense of the word!

how difficult was it to keep it from shorting out with all that metal around it?

I'm confident that Aaron would be glad to chat; feel free to reach out.
But the bottom line is that the guts of every guitar amp are surrounded by metal.
It's not hard to do it correctly but it's also not hard to do it almost correctly . . .