fun and helpful at the same time...

mhardy6647

Lunatic Member
This may not be of general interest, but I did sort of a good deed last weekend and I thought I'd at least share a photo.

A friend of ours passed on to me some old (Vietnam-era) Japanese hifi equipment a few years ago. One of the pieces was an Akai SS reel to reel deck. At the time our friend, Bill, asked me if I'd be able to dub some family recordings for him from the Akai to cassette. I said "sure", and could even go to CD if he wanted.

Well, last week Bill provided us with four 5" reels containing tapes, recorded in the mid-1970's, of his then 90-year-old grandmother and his then very young kids. Dubbing to cassette was fine, said he.

I selected a Nakamichi BX-1 from the basement and figured the best R2R deck to use was Bill's own Akai which had made the tapes originally. The old Akai is unusual in that the line-level outputs are 1/4" phone plugs, but I 'happened to have' a pair of phone plug to RCA plug cables :) Hooked everything up on the deck last Sunday (a gorgeous day) and went to work.

To my delight, the very-old tapes (Ampex 311 acetate base) were in fine physical shape (no oxide shedding) and sounded quite good, too. The dubs turned out quite well also. It was fun to hear these very old tapes, and it felt good to give Bill new access to the content (which he hasn't heard in a long time). Not a bad way to spend a beautiful, late-summer afternoon!
 
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You made a nice favor there:)
Rewarding and fun at the same time, those Ampex was good tapes, from the picture I can see they were recorded with 3-3/4 speed.
Nice looking X-150:cool:
 
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