Recommendations for Portable Reel to Reel players?

[KentTeffeteller]

I used to have a TC770. It also has XLR mic inputs and great mic preamps. It can be a bit of a challenge to keep it running mechanically. I recall having problems with the take up clutch control linkage. An interesting note about this deck, it has mechanical feedback on the supply side clutch to keep the tape tension the same regardless how much tape is on the supply reel. Same thing for take up torque. I used mine for on location recordings until I got a digital recorder. It made wonderful recordings. I called it a poor man's Nagra.

They were very nice field recorders. Used to use one for radio station field recording, and it worked very well for that job. I called mine "The Hillbilly Nagra"

 

[twiiii]

UHER or Nagra if you have the coin. I can remember lugging Ampex 300 and 351's to recording jobs. Ampex would put anything they made in a case, put handles on it and call it portable. Imaging moving a 300-4 to a a remote job along with the Mixers. Thank God for furniture Dollies.

 

[jlb2]

UHER or Nagra if you have the coin. I can remember lugging Ampex 300 and 351's to recording jobs. Ampex would put anything they made in a case, put handles on it and call it portable. Imaging moving a 300-4 to a a remote job along with the Mixers. Thank God for furniture Dollies.

None of those machines meet Marantz13's requirements - as a reminder, a portable 1/4 track deck that can play 7" reels.

 

[twiiii]

Depending on the model Nagra's could. Of course at the time they cost more than a diamond ringed Rolex. Model 4 could be adapted to use 10" reels if necessary. Movie studios used them with a sync track to record audio for movies on location out side of studios. They were little more than 1/2 the size of a Revox R2R. and about 1/2 as thick. There was a gentleman in town back in the 60's and 70's that recorded different events on 16 and 35 mm film. and he used is Nagra to record stereo audio with a 1/3 channel sync track. It used 7 inch reels and was very portable. It was a piece of art for sure.

 

[jlb2]

Depending on the model Nagra's could. Of course at the time they cost more than a diamond ringed Rolex. Model 4 could be adapted to use 10" reels if necessary. Movie studios used them with a sync track to record audio for movies on location out side of studios. They were little more than 1/2 the size of a Revox R2R. and about 1/2 as thick. There was a gentleman in town back in the 60's and 70's that recorded different events on 16 and 35 mm film. and he used is Nagra to record stereo audio with a 1/3 channel sync track. It used 7 inch reels and was very portable. It was a piece of art for sure.

That was not a 1/4 track machine, but a 1/2 track with a central pilot track. The non-pilot version of the IV-S had 2.75 mm tracks which was the standard in radio - at least it was in Europe - whereas the pilot version had 2 mm tracks with a central, very narrow track for the neopilot or time-code signal. Both were 1/2 track, and all the other Nagras were full-track mono with or without the pilot track.

I know them very well because I've used both versions extensively on the field, which also allows me to say that their portability is far from being as good as you think: 8 kg plus the mics, headphones and carrying bag. The weight and the size of the Nagras were widely criticized by their users.

In order for you to see for yourself the track layouts of both versions, this page shows photos of the heads of a pilot Nagra, and this one shows photos of the heads of a non-pilot Nagra. For comparison, here is the 4-track layout (see last photo) with its 1 mm tracks. As you can see, these are not at all the same. 1/4-track was a consumer-oriented layout with noticeably decreased performance in exchange of lower tape cost, not really suitable for professional use, so Nagra never made any 1/4-track machine, it was just not their market. As I said, it's not what Marantz13 is looking for.

Some instrumentation recorders like this one used a III or IV tape transport with different electronic circuitry and all sorts of heads, and sometimes even 1/2" tape. Those could be mistaken for Nagras but they were not at all Nagras, just Nagra-made tape transports integrated by another company to make a completely different sort of machine that recorded data, not sound.

 

[KentTeffeteller]

Depending on the model Nagra's could. Of course at the time they cost more than a diamond ringed Rolex. Model 4 could be adapted to use 10" reels if necessary. Movie studios used them with a sync track to record audio for movies on location out side of studios. They were little more than 1/2 the size of a Revox R2R. and about 1/2 as thick. There was a gentleman in town back in the 60's and 70's that recorded different events on 16 and 35 mm film. and he used is Nagra to record stereo audio with a 1/3 channel sync track. It used 7 inch reels and was very portable. It was a piece of art for sure.

Nagra does not have a 1/4 track model available. Uher did have one available, the 4400 Report-S. Caveat with it, it only accepts 5" reels.