Reel to reel mods - anyone know someone who does them?

pinksoir

a friend of mine found a r2r in a skip. It's an Akai M-8. I got it off him with the intention of using it as a mic preamp and I found a good few bits about doing this on the intraweb. Namely:

http://beyondsanityproductions.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13

http://lacinato.com/cm/audio/robertsmod

Apparently it's sounds alright. I don't have any "colour" preamps at the moment and I'd love to have one for some vocal stuff. I don't really have much experience doing mods to tube stuff besides modding an amp before. I'm afraid of the high voltages (with good reason!), so i'm wondering do any of you dudes have a suss on someone that could do the mods for me? I'm in Dublin. The first link above gives a step by step guide.

Cheers.

This is it (web image):

madtheory

Apart from fun, the other reason for doing a project like this is to save on the cost of buying a tube pre. Seems to me if you get someone else to do it you negate both reasons. So wouldn't it be cheaper to buy something instead?

And have you heard the SOS mic pre test? Shows that they're all pretty much the same when not overdriven.

pinksoir

I did consider that alright. I reckon I'll give it a go myself, once the caps are drained it's safe. Getting someone to do it for me could run into big money. I've built a good few circuits at this stage and I've modded an amp before, but those were with clear concise instructions. But like you say, it's about the fun. I'm entirely ITB now but since I have the unit I wouldn't mind seeing how it would sound as a preamp.

You mean all tube pres are the same, or all pres regardless? I'm downloading the shootout now to have a listen.

pinksoir

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct12/articles/preampsmedia.htm

If this is the thing you're talking about, then yeah, I can't tell much difference between the preamps. There's a very (very very) subtle difference if you listen really closely, but nothing that you'd ever notice in a mix.

TroutMask

SOS are silly. Of course there's a difference between different pre's

TroutMask

pinksoir wrote: »

I did consider that alright. I reckon I'll give it a go myself, once the caps are drained it's safe. Getting someone to do it for me could run into big money. I've built a good few circuits at this stage and I've modded an amp before, but those were with clear concise instructions. But like you say, it's about the fun. I'm entirely ITB now but since I have the unit I wouldn't mind seeing how it would sound as a preamp.

You mean all tube pres are the same, or all pres regardless? I'm downloading the shootout now to have a listen.

Give it a go yourself. Hiring a tech to do it is going to cost a lot. I would go nuts modding a pre like this - recap all electrolytics, replace plate resistors w/ power metal oxides, test signal resistors to see if in range. Some of the signal caps will need doing too. The impedance is going to be an issue, so you might wanna consider placing some iron there if matching is needed: Lundahl, CineMag, Jensen are all good traffos for impedance matching

pinksoir

The dude whose page I linked to originally used a Shure M68 transformer cos he had one lying around, but said there was a significant improvement using a better one (CineMag). Basically the outcome is a dual tube amp; 12AX7 and EF86, each with a low and hi Z input. So it's quite versatile. It can be used as a mic preamp or as a guitar amp. Plus there's two of them in the unit so there's a lot of scope there. By all accounts it sounds pretty good.

The only thing is time. Between writing and recording and running a shop I can't see myself really having much time to take on a project. As it is I have a half finished Midibox SID sitting there for over a year!

TroutMask

Yeh - saw that page. Looks like a cool project - worth mothballing for a period till you get the time and space to work on it.

madtheory

TroutMask wrote: »

SOS are silly. Of course there's a difference between different pre's

They don't say that there is NO difference. But they do provide evidence that it's not night and day, especially when not overdriven. Check out the thread.

studiorat

What the SOS article really shows is that a mic-pre might be great with one microphone and horrible with another, or vice versa. Which is something I've always found. Two mic pres I have illustrate this very well. A C-12 into one sounds awful with lots of sibilance and the same mic in another is really good. The first mic-pre sounds great with dynamic microphones though. In this case it seems very much down to how fast the mic pre is when picking up transients in the high end.

Also the listening tests aren't particularly relevant since there doesn't seem to be a standard listening environment for each tester.

TroutMask

I couldn't download the file and I'm not paying SOS for the entire article. I am able to read the introduction, and I do not agree with some of the author's statements. When i was in and out of recording studios on the 80's and early 90's it was common enough to see pres brought in for sessions. That is where the whole 'lunchbox' concept came from in the first place - API and Valley being notable pioneers of the format. Of course, not only pres were shipped in - gates, comps and FX were routinely added to the 'house hardware', both in the studio and live.

Concerning the mythical 'clean neutral preamps' - if we're talking about Mackie, Behringer, A&H, cheap Soundcraft, MOTU....... the generic IC-based pre that abounds - well, you can have 'em, because they sound unsatisfactory. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply deluded and has never heard (or felt) the effect of a high-quality preamp. These are listeners who, for whatever reason, do not know what good sound sounds like.

One of the irritating things about SOS has always been their insistence on factoring price into the review, and so 'Unit X' is good ...... considering that it costs £25'. If they would leave price out of the equation and review the equipment on its own merits, then their appraisals would be much more accurate.