Tape Decks I Have Known

And, now while we change servers, we’ll hear this lovely organ interlude…

[Update: the move went almost perfectly. It was eerie. Anyhow… no music this post. Your ears needed the rest.]

Nostalgia: Tape Decks I Have Known

Yes, before women and the bottle… I had another love…

I’ll spare y’all the 3340-S’s and 3440-S’s, the Series 70 1/2″ 8, or the 40-4 that is, I think, my last remaining reel machine. (All those were TASCAMs by the way.)

We’ve all seen our share of most of those, probably.

But yesterday I was pondering this picture I’d earlier stumbled across on the web of (an instance of) the first tape machine I did an overdub on, circa 1964, Sony TC630. (It belonged to my “rich” cousin and it was an object of great envy on my part. But he was also generous enough to loan it to me a few times, including to do the preprogrammed music for my grandparents’ 50th anniversery party, for which I also recorded my mom dueting with herself on “The Anniversery Waltz” — my first overdub.)

While I pondered the glory that had been the TC630, half-watched on the TV was the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 DVD of The Crawling Hand.

I looked up from the photo of the TC630 just in time to see one of the characters in the movie opening a small tape recorder… it took a second but I realized it was a copy of the same, no-name, no-capstan $20 battery powered tape recorder I got for Christmas in 1962 — my very first tape recorder.


The Machine That Started It All for Me

About halfway through the message he’s taping to tell his girlfriend and her professor uncle that he’s turning into a monster he goes into monster mode and smashes the poor little machine (How poor was it? So poor it couldn’t even afford a capstan. Buh dum.)

Or tries to smash it. The plastic top goes flying right away — but it was made during the waning days of the overbuilt-metal era of Japanese transistor consumer electronics — and no matter how the teen-monster kicks and stomps it, it remains amazingly intact…

Around the beginning of my senior year of high school I pulled my savings together and bought my own stereo 7″ reel deck, a Sony TC-250a… it was $119, fair trade, IIRC — and it was NO TC630… you couldn’t even record a single track at once — just what was effectively “joint stereo,” so there was no overdubbing possible. That would have been nice but I didn’t play an instrument then and I mostly wanted to make my own mix tapes and… you know… stuff.

My first plug in tape recorder, also a Sony, a little hazy on the number, was a 5″ reel transistor-tube hybrid machine (transistor recording preamps and tube power amp). I HAVE seen a picture of it on the web but foolishly didn’t save it — and haven’t seen one since. It had a molded white heavy styrene top and a coral colored grill and underpan. I really loved that thing but sold it for something like $3.50 at a yard sale in the early 70s. I guess sometimes you gotta let go. The kid who bought it probably had a lot of fun. I hope.

 

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4 thoughts on “Tape Decks I Have Known

  1. Mx. Remy Ann David

    I love the picture of your Sony TC-630 and the TC-250. Both of which I still own. I still have them. We bought them new. When I was just a kid. Now I’m almost 61 and still have them both. And they still work and work well.

    Years later I ended up working for Scully. As their last Quality Control Manager and Final Test Technician. In its last year and a half of operation and manufacturing. When owned by Ampro Broadcast Products, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After it was acquired from Dictaphone.

    You’ve got a great site! I love it. I get so nostalgic over this stuff. And still own it

    Reply
  2. TK Post author

    Thanks! Yeah, that TC-630… I loved that thing. My cousin was cool enough to lend it to me a few times. He used to give me a few bucks to record his bluegrass band at parties, too. I would have done it for free, of course.

    Reply
  3. Charles Straw

    [* Shield plugin marked this comment as “Pending Moderation”. Reason: Failed Bot Test (expired) *]
    Nobody likes ’em and they’re hulky and not pretty, but I collect old Roberts/Akai/Rheem (etc) R2Rs….even two years ago it was easy to get ’em cheap, but that popular, acerbic British audio geek on YouTube did a video on open reels and now every hack everywhere wants a R2R and prices have doubled…I get mine at the swap meet cheap anyway, where sellers think they’re big radios…a couple of mine do SOUND ON SOUND…but I just like the way they look sitting on shelves…Bought an Akai X-VI and a Roberts 6000 recently…basically the same machine….one spins, no sound…the other is dead…but they both look great…with classic Akai black and silver and grey design aspects….also picked up a generic 4-INCH reel portable last month…I have no 4-inch take up reels…so I heated up an old spoon and “modified’ a 5-inch plastic reel (melted and snapped off sections of the 5-inch reel…it looks WRONG, but it holds enough tape and spins

    I didn’t know anything about open reel machines, but taught myself about ’em by looking at eBay listings….I then bought a busted (only one channel working) Sony 530 and tore it apart and examined it’s innards…then began buying and tinkering to satisfy my new-found lust for the bulky and ugly monsters

    I also have a fine collection of minidisc recorders and a vast collection of LP records featuring exclusively (what I call) FAMILY GOSPEL albums…you know, the ones with big-haired singers adorning their covers?

    Wish I could get my heavy Akai 355-D working again…bought it from a mom and her son in a trailer by the beach (it was a relatives possession)….probably weighs 100 pounds…it was working, then I dusted off a circuit board and all hell broke loose…whaddya expect from a 60-year old assembly line product?

    Best field recorder I own is a vintage ZOOM HN-4….it’s a bland thing, but takes two batteries and never fails…it has those 90-120 degree tilting mics that look neat, but do nothing different when tilted…stereo of course…it’s a workhorse….or sometimes I use a variety of minidisc Hi-MD recorders with standard condenser mini-mics….with me, it’s the material and content of voice or object sound that matters…audio quality is always secondary….I mean, would you rather have a poor recording of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address, or no recording of it at all…so, content not audio quality rules the roost IMHO…and Lincoln is on the penny, so it all works out for everybody!

    Reply
    1. TK Post author

      Charles

      You’re clearly a person after my own heart!

      I’m sorry I didn’t see this before to approve and reply to it. I really need to visit this place more often. Maybe I’d even be fired up enough to write something new…

      Thanks!

      Reply

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