Tape Gear!

[sonictape]

I ordered around June time and replies were within 48 hours and unit took 4-5 days from Germany to UK. I also emailed around Dec last year and it was instant.

They’ve recently put something on their site relating to huge demand relating to a YouTube video so it may be due to that or some other reason but their communication was ace so that’s unusual.

[sleeepwalk]

I just looked into one of these because of this post and now I really want one

Does it have pitch control as well?

[petesasqwax]

Enjoyed that thoroughly! Is the price really 382 Euros?

[mutedial]

The pricelist is here. I bought one last year.

I agree with @sonictape that the service is really great. Ulrich forgot (or I forgot to ask) for a plastic reel and he sent one out really quickly. It’s nice to get a reel to reel in a box and not have to worry how messed up the tape heads are, etc. The cables it needs are bit unusual though (for me).

One thing I’d like to find more information on is calibrating the uher report (or if it’s totally necessary)? There’s lots of information online about how to calibrate other large reel to reels and nagras. For how I’m using it I’m fine with what I’m getting out of it, but I wonder if it’s something I should deal with in the future.

[sonictape]

No but it does have 4 tape speeds so you are a bit limited on delay times.

[petesasqwax]

The idea of having a brand new Uher machine is incredibly appealing! I have three old tape units in my loft, none of which are very happy, alas. I should perhaps thoroughly explore the potential for repairing them before I jump at bringing another unit into the house, but the temptation is immense.

[shakey]

This must have been the review by Techmoan. His channel has a lot of vids about weird and obscure physical audio formats that is probably of interest to anyone in this thread.

[Hlp]

Does anyone know of meaningful mods for the sony d6 / d6c? I decided i want to get into wm listening again and bought a modern ex wm for that. But i need to make tapes for it. Not really into a big deck and the d6 recordings are said t be very cool.

I could use it as looper too but the 4% pitch range is just much too tame and i wonder if that could be modded? I know it has a certain chip pcb as speed control unit so my hope arent up high.

[hallvard]

Managed to get the mic input on this one up and running again - changing one electrolytic cap was all it took. Very happy to save an oldie :).

[trypps]

Wadup!

I like the look of these and I have been obsessing over using tape to record loops and get some tape echo going for ambient stuff.

Wondering if anyone owns one of these? what’s your experience been like?

Any guides or tutorials, even videos to watch on them before I take the plunge?

[khladomysl]

I’ve aquired PMD222 recently. Haven’t modified it internally, but it gives pretty nice tone to the incoming audio and can overdrive without awful distortion. Different types of inputs and controls are also great.

[trypps]

That’s the one I’ve got my eye on. How did you get up and running with it?

[khladomysl]

I want to order few tape loops to experiment with. For now I’ve got some “new vintage” cassetes from 80s and using it for tape saturation/hiss effects and also having fun with half-speed and tone/pitch controls.

[trypps]

check this out for tape echo

How to turn a cassette recorder into a tape echo

[Shiftr]

I’ve got a similar one. Only 1 output is working.
How did you know which cap to replace? I’m thinking of replacing all the electrolytic cap’s

[janglesoul]

yes, it’s nice. I saw another video that I believe was in response to Hainbach. Maybe a lines-member? It basically showed how you could use any 3-head cassette deck as an external echo for your daw, even without varispeed. The trick was to put a delay-plugin in line with your External effect (the cassette echo) in Live. The delay would be set-up for a single repeat, 100 percent wet. - And you could then just tweak how long the signal should be delayed using the time-knob on the delay plugin.

[hallvard]

I checked all the electrolytic caps with a multimeter (measuring resistance) and found one on the amplifier board that was short circuited. Replacing that one did the trick for the mic input. I’d do that first and see if that helps, since there is a risk doing too much soldering on these old boards.

I didn’t get sound from the phono/radio output (only built in speaker), so interested to hear if you’re fixing that. Although, I need to check that the din-cable I was using contacted the right pins, so it could be that simple…

Good luck!

[hyena]

i have the 222 since quite some years now and love it. nice preamps, nice limiter, great internal mic and speaker (i did some crude “reamping” through it for degradation, great stuff).
i started using is as a tape echo without mods like this:

• post fader aux send from mixer into line in
• line out into one mixer channel (return)
• use the same aux send on the “return” channel to create repeats (feedback)
• monitor set to “tape” on the 222
• hit rec+play and you’re good to go
• even without the varispeed mod you still have two speeds: normal and low, and the tone control to sculpt the sound of it, plus you can saturate easily

then i did the mod, its pretty easy, you just have to cut one trace with a sharp razor or knife or cutter and solder a jumper cable from one specific point to another (only two solder joints) and that’s it. then you can use the varispeed also in recording mode!

have to say the sound of this cassette echo is great! i have a korg stage echo se-300 and strymon magneto to compare, all three of them sound absolutely gorgeous, three different characters

i acquired my unit for very cheap on ebay after a two years hunt (no way i was spending the ridiculous amounts you see on reverb and such), it came from a very nice Ukrainian seller (its shop was mainly old soviet photo cameras), no bag, a lot of scratches but fully working. i have some transport noise on it, i’ll probably have to change belt and lubricate some parts, other than that its just fantastic. the heads are in very good shape, frequency response is still awesome. i have of course cleaned them with isopropylic alcohol (98%) and demagnetized them.

only thing i noticed after the mod is that it seems to draw a bit more power, now it works better on batteries than with the universal PSU i was using. perhaps i have to give it more milliamps…

[michelstirner]

finally finished refurbishing this old beauty, it’s a dynacord echochord mini tape echo from 1960. very good and warm sounding preamps, and by tweaking the tone controls you can get amazing results. i often use the machine just for tape saturation which works great!
if you’re in europe, get one of these. i bought mine for 130€ together with an amplifier. needed to put some work in (basically cleaning, greasing some of the parts, resoldering some connections, replacing the power socket and i decided to replace the DIN connectors with normal 6,3mm jack sockets) but now it’s an amazing machine for very little money.
try overdriving the preamp a little, gives it such a warm and heavy feeling

[trypps]

no way! if you can find that it would be awesome for me