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mattb

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Hi All

 

Just saying hi, have recently joined the forum and love the fact there is a dedicated R2R section!  My rig is a Revox PR99 MK1 modified for direct head out going to a Bottlehead Eros tape head pre.

A selection of tapes so far (have only recently got into this) I have bought from International Phonograph (Jonathan a great guy) and mixed compilations from Opus 3 - Eric Bibb songs on these mixes simply stunning.

Hopefully we see a R2R resurgence a la vinyl 

 

cheers

Matt

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Hey Matt, welcome, and thanks for sharing the info of your system.

Did you assemble the Eros yourself? How difficult was it?

I notice it doesnt have volume adjustment. Do you find this a limitation at all? There are alot of tapes I have bought, that require a balance tweak.

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Yes - I assembled the Eros and the instructions provided with it make it quite straightforward.  I haven't missed a balance adjustment - if I listen to the R2R through my main system the Eros goes into my main Preamplifier which has balance adjustment should it be required.  If I listen to the R2R through headphones I take the Eros into another Bottlehead amplifier, a single ended triode (SEX amp) - this doesn't have balance adjustment but I don't seem to need it with the tapes I have listened to so far.

I found with the Eros that it is important to match the two EF86 tubes and I also ensured that when I tapped off the direct outputs from the heads that all the signal wires were the same length, etc.

 

cheers

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Interesting read, and welcome mattb. I made enquiries about the Bottlehead myself, as well as other suitable pre amps.

 

In the end I decided against it, and my Otari deck sounds damn fine running through a simple Grave Science switch box. I've been without any form of pre amp for nearly 2 years now and loving it.

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Thanks Chris

Hadn't seen the Grave Science Switch box before so just googled - nice.

How are you taking the signal from your Otari - via the normal line output or via monitor out?  Reason I ask is that when I first got my Revox I experimented with the two outputs and found that the monitor one was the best from a SQ perspective given that it bypassed most of the internal electronics of the unit and hence was 'cleaner'.

Otari's are great decks - good example of bulletproof engineering!

 

rgs

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Yes - I assembled the Eros and the instructions provided with it make it quite straightforward.

Cool, is it a standard kit for any tape machine. Or did you tell them you had a PR99?

The reason I ask this, is that I had been told that different machines (different brands and different headblocks) had different output signals, slopes, etc, and the output electronics in our machines are designed for their headblock.

So, in replacing the output stage, should it be dialled in for the machine?

Did you get some calibration tapes, and check it all looked as it should?

Edited by ozmillsy
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Yes - standard kit, I didn't need to specify my reel to reel.  I believe the Eros can work with a wide variety of playback heads - the Revox heads are quite low output and the Eros gain seems to cope quite well.  The Eros also has selectable NAB and IEC which is something the PR99 never did.  It may be possible to do any fine tuning or 'tailoring' for a specific playback head but I haven't done so and not aware that anyone else has needed to.

 

I haven't attempted a calibration as yet, may do so in the future, but when I listen to the same track on reel to reel master tape copy and DSD version the R2R sounds fantastic

 

cheers

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[quote name="mattb" post="1243171" timestamp="1417593860 Thanks Chris

Hadn't seen the Grave Science Switch box before so just googled - nice.

How are you taking the signal from your Otari - via the normal line output or via monitor out? Reason I ask is that when I first got my Revox I experimented with the two outputs and found that the monitor one was the best from a SQ perspective given that it bypassed most of the internal electronics of the unit and hence was 'cleaner'.

Otari's are great decks - good example of bulletproof engineering!

rgs

G'day Matt.I use the normal line output.

Considering buying some better RCA to XLR interconnects, using adapters at the minute.

Edited by soundfan
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