Reel music
Mar. 8th, 2020 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
murakoziI know I've been terrible about posting here for a long time. I'd like to say I'll post more often, but I have a bad habit of procrastinating when it comes to writing journal stuff.
To illustrate that, here's something I got for myself for my birthday...a year ago.
I love old AV equipment and for years had been wanting to get a reel to reel recorder. Unfortunately, ones that still work and don't need a ton of maintenance repair tend to be rather pricey. I was looking at recorders being sold on ebay when I ran across a listing for the machine pictured above. Call it nostalgia, but I just had to try to buy it.
You see, that's the model that my stepfather had when I was rather young. He owned it before he married my mother. I can remember my mother bringing my sister and me along to Dad's apartment and I was fascinated by the reel to reel player. When I saw it on ebay, I couldn't resist.
It's an Akai X-150D. It was a mid range unit back when it was new. From what I've been able to learn, most of them were sold by the exchanges on US military bases in Asia. That sounds about right, since Dad most likely got his on one of his tours to Viet Nam. Mine was restored by the person selling it, so it runs well. I'm no audiophile, but I think the sound from it is rather good. So far, I've not tried recording on it, though I keep meaning to.
I only have a few tapes to play on it. Now and then I look around on ebay for more tapes, but never seem to win any auctions.
Now I just need to keep myself from finding some other old AV gear to spend money on.
To illustrate that, here's something I got for myself for my birthday...a year ago.
I love old AV equipment and for years had been wanting to get a reel to reel recorder. Unfortunately, ones that still work and don't need a ton of maintenance repair tend to be rather pricey. I was looking at recorders being sold on ebay when I ran across a listing for the machine pictured above. Call it nostalgia, but I just had to try to buy it.
You see, that's the model that my stepfather had when I was rather young. He owned it before he married my mother. I can remember my mother bringing my sister and me along to Dad's apartment and I was fascinated by the reel to reel player. When I saw it on ebay, I couldn't resist.
It's an Akai X-150D. It was a mid range unit back when it was new. From what I've been able to learn, most of them were sold by the exchanges on US military bases in Asia. That sounds about right, since Dad most likely got his on one of his tours to Viet Nam. Mine was restored by the person selling it, so it runs well. I'm no audiophile, but I think the sound from it is rather good. So far, I've not tried recording on it, though I keep meaning to.
I only have a few tapes to play on it. Now and then I look around on ebay for more tapes, but never seem to win any auctions.
Now I just need to keep myself from finding some other old AV gear to spend money on.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-10 02:30 pm (UTC)Along with the lack of prerecorded tapes in good condition, there's also the drawback of getting it to work well with more modern components. It took a couple adapters to get from the two big mono plug outputs (visible on the left)to my not-too-recent tuner's RCA inputs. Since I didn't want to string speaker wire all over the place, I also had to go from banana terminals to a mini stereo connector in a bluetooth transmitter, which talks to the speakers elsewhere in the room.
Obviously, it's not an ideal setup, but with the layout of my apartment, I kinda have to make do. It really doesn't sound bad at all, considering I'm listening to 50+ year old media going through all those connectors and such.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-10 04:53 pm (UTC)I should hold on to my Marantz receiver for you: it has phono inputs, as does my Technics. I don’t recall any problems with the Technics, the Marantz needs a new AC plug: one of the dogs chewed through the power cable. No big deal. I also have a pair of Bose 301s that aren’t being used, I just don’t have an appropriate space for them.