#41

seeking some advice on ye ol bypassing the erase head technique

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I’ve got overdubs working with this setup, but I have to reallllly overdrive the input to get little ghosties to appear

the results are cool, don’t get me wrong (reminds of some of the ian william craig stuff), but I feel like I’ve witnessed some cleaner overdubs from others & i’m curious what makes the difference. nicer heads ? tape age ?

my machine is a random thrift store find (not too much info online) and I’m using a loop from the tape that came with it. functioning otherwise seems pretty good. kinda has a scraggly old man quality (w/ matching smell)

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it also has this knob on the top, which is highly tantalizing yet has no perceivable effect from what I can tell :thinking:

#42

you could put some cardboard or adhesive* tape on the erase head. looking at your photo i would say the tape is coming in at a too narrow angle and does not pass correctly in front of the rec.head.

  • be warned of sticky residuals from the adhesive tape on the erase head. on the other hand if the device is sacrifiable you could cut or desolder its wires.
#43

Install a potentiometer between the voltage and erase head and make sure it’s grounded.

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#44

ooooo YES - variable erase level ?

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#45

Before I spend too much time searching around… Does anyone have a recommendation for a tape splicing kit? And dual banana to mono jack cables (for mono Nagra reel-to-reel)?

#46

Trew audio can sell the cables and adaptors you want, including the DIN ports. I’ve had them service my Nagra collection as well and consider them great at it.

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#47

Thanks! I am in Europe and saw Patch Point had some cables too, but the shipping to Norway was 30 EUR, more than the cable :).

Oh, and if anyone has found a good source for PSU for Nagra III, that would be helpful, too!

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#48


This is a shop in Paris.

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#49

Thanks!

I found a cable and Tuchel connector (for adapting a power supply) from mikesfilmsound.com. Not very cheap, but prices seemed similar to other places.

This would have been a lot cheaper and quicker to solder myself, but I have limited access to doing that at the moment…

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#50

wow, we went through that thread without mentionning “Composing with tape recorders” by Terence Dwyer (a pdf is out there).
Has someone read it and found useful ideas ? (i just found it on my hard drive and though the pdf reader opened it right in the middle i don’t remember actually reading it).

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#51
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