Sony Open Reel Tape Deck - TC766-2

My restored Sony Open Reel Tape Deck, besides cleaning, polishing and oiling, the rubber pinch rollers were machine ground by specialists.  The old transistors in the preamp circuits were replaced with new ones and this significantly reduced the transistor noise (hiss) to an inaudible level.  Without tapes to really test out the machine, I purchased a few from eBay sellers, choosing only 7-1/2 ips (inch per second) tapes.  Sounds wonderfully analogue - frequency response was acceptable and the recording is as good as the equipment and technology could reach back then.  As the unit can go up to 15ips it would be good to lay hands on such a recording (hard to find) - as the Tape Project  tapes are definitely out of reach for me.....

Sony CDR-W66 and Marantz CDR 630

Then the desire to make digital copies of our vintage vinyl LPs that were not available in cd format.  Got myself not one but 2 cd recorders: Sony CDR-W66 and the Marantz CDR630 below.

 

 The Sony is equipped with all the inputs and outputs you can think of - analogue and digital (both RCA and XLR).  It even has word clock input and computer keyboard (for typing cd text) input, below.

 The Sony has all the features that I liked and sounded wonderful, making great copies of my LPs on cds.  The built-in ADC is good and the cd text feature an added advantage.  So, I decided to keep it (Sony) and disposed off the Marantz.  Pictured below with the old favourite TEAC VRDS-10 see how small it is.