been pretty impressed with the gx heads on both my akai gx-52's machines..they still make crisp recordings after 20 years. :thmbsp:
all things being equal. I like a hitachi or other f&f deck in great shape. if not in great shape then there's no advantage to having f&f heads of course.
Most manufacturers switched to Sendust and Ferrite compostion heads because the sendust had much lower eddy current losses at higher frequencies than traditional ferrite heads, although wear was an issue. At normal-expected-life for a tape deck, wear wasn't that big an issue but improved HF response by using Sendust compostion heads was a big plus. Thus the better decks went away from ferrite&ferrite to sendust&ferrite.
I have two Akai GX912 decks, and contrary to many here, I have had nothing but great results in terms of sonics.
I have used them continuously and have not had any pitting or other wear. They simply sound great.
I would put up my Akai's against any decks out there in terms of sound. And, like I said, the heads are like new.
Maybe I'm just lucky??
My 2 cents worth.
Cheers
You might expand this thread a bit, separating cassette heads and reel to reel heads. In cassette decks Nak Crystalloy has what I feel is the best balance of sound vs. wear, but there are many examples of sendust decks that sound wonderful. Yamaha had some sort of plasma coated head in the K900/K950 that was a great playback head. To my ear the glass ferrites were not a neutral when used in R/P, but do sound good in playback only decks.
In reel to reel, those Ampex AG series heads were great. Teac permalloy seemed a bit longer lasting that Pioneer, and Sony lasted longer than both of those. Tandberg crossfield heads, however, run circles around everything sound wise. Great dynamic range, low distortion, natural high end, excellent track to track matching. They would be my top choice, except for the Revox B-77 heads at 3 3/4. I don't know what is different about these heads, but they are extrordinary.
Even though Tandberg used X-field technology before the TD 20 series, it had nothing to do with the material used for the heads.
The 10XD and 9100X used ferrit head material for the PB head.
Somewhere I read that they changed it to ferrit for those models which implies that something else was used before that. maybe that was permaloy?
"dolph"
In very general terms:
The longer lasting the worse sounding.
"dolph"
hahaha, it is likely to be true for the more common tape heads, yes.
I'm not sure where fancy single-manufacturer-developed heads like those by Nak fit in there though. Supposedly best of both worlds.
the older Tandberg heads was made of material that had same short lifespan as permalloy - i don't think the called them anything special
the series before 9100 would be the 4xxx and 6xxx in my book - had a 6000x that ate both record and pb heads in less than 2000hr
I have used them continuously and have not had any pitting or other wear. They simply sound great.
I would put up my Akai's against any decks out there in terms of sound. And, like I said, the heads are like new.
Maybe I'm just lucky??
My 2 cents worth.
Cheers