I bought this UHER machine about a year ago from that auction site when my old Sony portable stopped fast winding altogether. I put new belts on it and used it for a bit, then it sat in my basement forgotten for about a year. I dug it out today and used the line in / line out function on it and I gotta tell ya I was totally blown away by the sound quality.
It always sounded good through the 3x5 built in speaker, but I never tried using it like a tape deck. I almost can't tell it from my large machines - it sounds that good! 7 1/2 ips sounds the best, of course, but even at 3 3/4 it holds up as a hi fi recorder - it really does. Granted it's a 1/2 track mono version of this great machine, but it's hard to believe all of that great sound is coming from this little 5" reel to reel sitting on the bench plugged into the big stereo. Those Germans and their engineering!
The little box that says Akustomat is the voice activation unit. You plug it in to the side of the machine and set the knobs for sensitivity and on-time duration and it'll start and stop recording when it "hears" things. This machine runs at 7 1/2, 3 3/4, 1 7/8 and 15/16 ips speeds. The UHER microphone has a start/stop switch that activates a pinch roller solenoid in the machine while the motor idles (no drag on start up) and it has a moveable baffle system inside for up close interviews or omni-directional use. You change that via a slide lever on the side of the mic. It is a very good sounding microphone - sounds much better than it looks (not surprising). It came with the original power supply but the PO had it set for 220 volts and was using 110, so it burned up. I used what remained of it to make a new power supply with an old Sony wall-wart which works just right. It'll also run 5 D cell batteries or the recahargeable pack from UHER, both of which make it even heavier than it already is.
These were bullet proof units used by reporters everywhere from the early 60's through the 80's - in the later years if you didn't have a professional Marantz or Sony cassette machine you had one of these. Not in the same league as Nagra, but very versatile and (as I found out today) damn fine sounding!
It always sounded good through the 3x5 built in speaker, but I never tried using it like a tape deck. I almost can't tell it from my large machines - it sounds that good! 7 1/2 ips sounds the best, of course, but even at 3 3/4 it holds up as a hi fi recorder - it really does. Granted it's a 1/2 track mono version of this great machine, but it's hard to believe all of that great sound is coming from this little 5" reel to reel sitting on the bench plugged into the big stereo. Those Germans and their engineering!
The little box that says Akustomat is the voice activation unit. You plug it in to the side of the machine and set the knobs for sensitivity and on-time duration and it'll start and stop recording when it "hears" things. This machine runs at 7 1/2, 3 3/4, 1 7/8 and 15/16 ips speeds. The UHER microphone has a start/stop switch that activates a pinch roller solenoid in the machine while the motor idles (no drag on start up) and it has a moveable baffle system inside for up close interviews or omni-directional use. You change that via a slide lever on the side of the mic. It is a very good sounding microphone - sounds much better than it looks (not surprising). It came with the original power supply but the PO had it set for 220 volts and was using 110, so it burned up. I used what remained of it to make a new power supply with an old Sony wall-wart which works just right. It'll also run 5 D cell batteries or the recahargeable pack from UHER, both of which make it even heavier than it already is.
These were bullet proof units used by reporters everywhere from the early 60's through the 80's - in the later years if you didn't have a professional Marantz or Sony cassette machine you had one of these. Not in the same league as Nagra, but very versatile and (as I found out today) damn fine sounding!
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