Reel to Reel Tape Machines - bloody beginner

basically, any tape machine will do for this. the things to look for are the general condition of the machine and the heads, but also the tape speed plays an important role. the higher the speed, the better the sound. the advantage machines like the revox have is build quality and availability of parts, generally machines from studiobrands like revox or teac are better built and parts are still available. it's better to buy a little more expensive machine that's been overhauled than a cheapo thats been in grandma's attic for 15 years.
erasing is certainy possible, basically you record with no signal coming in like on cassette decks of old days. i re-use my tapes frequently, they can be used a lot of times before they really wear. but also pay attention to what tape the machine is set up to work with: basically the only tape still available new is RMG which is a copy of the old BASF tapes. this setup can of course be changed, but usually needs a person with some knowledge of a tape recorder and those aren't always around..

I'm currently looking at a busted reel recorder in my studio, so as always I'd like to stress out: get one that is well maintained throughout the years and keep it maintained after you bought it. I'm not kidding when I say it's like buying a 30 year old washing machine: nobody in their right mind will ever do that. But if you're passionate, you could have a more positive view and say it's like buying a 30 year old car. No matter how you look at it, the fact is that there's lots of parts that are very sensitive to age and wear and if you go for cheap (like I did) you'll have to be ready to invest money in it later.
Be sure to get a model and make for which spare parts are relatively easy to get (either from their manufacturer, from freaks or from donor machines). The most common brands are Studer/Revox, Tascam/Teac and Otari.
Best is to first figure out for what brand you can get parts most easily, decide on the type and make of that brand you want, find a service manual for it, see how it works in theory and then go looking for that machine. Most important things to look for are on any brand and make are typical signs of wear on the heads, the reel engines, capstan engine, capstan belts, brakes, pinch rollers and tension arms. A decent seller will already have the pictures up supporting his claims of 'no signs wear, heads in good condition', etc, etc. As for the Akai, they say Ferrite heads don't wear, which is not true: they do wear but different from normal heads. Normal heads open up after many hours of use, ferrite heads get a cracked surface. Both result in a dull, undynamic sound.
Make a recording on the spot, play it back and listen to the sound: does it sound good, without any weirdness in the pitch and speed, and not muffled, dull and noisy?
If you really want a care free machine, which like with washing machines and cars is never 100% certain, spend that extra money and get one that's restored. You'll pay more, but you'll safe yourself some headaches and a lot of the money you spend on a restored one you'd end up spending anyway.
Once you have bought the machine, don't forget to get important maintenance tools: a head degausser (demagnetizer) and isopropyl alcohol

As for tape, in theory, yes you can erase and re-use tape, if the tape is in good shape and doesn't flake or get sticky and you're recorder is probperly set up for the tape you are using (bias). If the erase head on the machine is any good, erasing tape can be done by simply recording over the existing recording, by recording a mute signal or by erasing it with a tape degausser (which will be expensive, degaussing machines are only interesting for broadcasters and studios). But because of the nature of tape, which is in essence a polyester band with some metal particles glued to it, you'll be often better off to use tape only once or twice for mastering. Coming from a broadcasting situation myself I do re-use tape myself, but never for important recordings.

the gx630 has a very good reputation as a workhorse, so in itself thats not a bad deck at all.

Well yeah, why not... My first deck was a small 7" quartertrack Philips and it was enough to get me hooked. I even mastered a lot of tracks and two albums on it. Come to think, especially right now it's actually in a much better shape than my Tascam So yeah, go for that Akai, see that it works good enough to make some fun recordings and at the very least give a real good glimpse on how tape works.

Do order some fresh new tape tho, so that at least you know that the tape is perfectly good the first time you use it. If you start using that one tape more than once, you'll find out whether re-using tape works for you or not.

If the recorder comes with so called NAB hubs, you can order tapes with metal reels, if you don't have hubs you can order them separately or order tape on plastic trident reels (which don't need hubs). Also see to it that you have or order an empty take up reel
Places that sell tape also sell these typical accesoires. My advice is to order everything with Thomann in Germany, as of late they have it all, even a head degausser (demagnetizer).

Well, I guess it is a good sign that Thomann stocks these kind of things. Maybe there will be a comeback of tape again, who knows?
Apart from the electronic music sector even vinyl sales have risen again in the last years (mainly rock and indie music), so why not a renaissance of tape? Would be awesome.

Again thanks for the tips guys.....
I'll go for the Akai and will follow your advises regarding tapes etc.
Thanks for sharing this wisdom with a greenhorn.... :-)

oddly i was browsing around on ebay this week for old reel to reels, this is an awesome thread of info! thx.

^^ colonel kurtz secret tapes... 

Hehe... The degradation is caused by the aging of the binder (glue) that holds the particles. So you'd reverse everything that you'd normally would do: store the tapes in a warm, moist or moldy room, in the sun, fully unprotected thus not in a box nor the plastic it originally came in... Or you could keep winding the tape on a bad recorder (ie not cleaned, not demagnetized) and keep holding the cue button so the heads hit the tape. If you see a residue coming from the tape and landing on your machine (like brown, rusty colored dust), that's the particles coming from the tape. Every particle is little piece of sound you loose.

Another way to get really bad tape sound is by playing them on a bad recorder, with bad wow and flutter (which is caused by a dirty tape path, bend capstan shafts, irregular running reel tables, bad pinch rollers). This will give awkward pitches, a bit of a watery sound, but could also give a dull sound. A dynamically dull sound, with loss in highs and mids, is also achieved by damaged heads, badly aligned heads and magnetized heads.

Then there's print through, which is a sort of pre- or post echo on the tape. Because tape is polyester band on a round spindle, glued with metal particles that hold a magnetic recording, you have many layers of tape sitting on top of each other. Because these layers are magnetic, they can affect each other, leaving a weak copy of one layer onto the other. This effect is partially influenced by the way the recorder recorded the sound on tape, and whether that tape was suitable or not (the bias), but mostly by the quality of the polyester band, the quality of the particles and the storage conditions.

Dropouts (occasional losses of sound) are normally caused by a recorder that has a bad bias, but is also caused by damaged tapes, tapes that lost more particles on a random parts. So if you want drop outs, you could probably find a way to achieve those. On video and audio tapes, dropouts are often caused by non rewound tapes that fell to the floor, physically damaging a small part of the tape. I reckon you could find a way to damage your tapes...

A very easy way to degrade sound is by what I (and probably others) use to call 'generation loss', which was a big worry editing analog video and audio. In analog audio, generation loss is simply the loss of fidelity by making copies of one tape to another. If you keep copying tapes, from A to B and from B back to A, and you keep doing that a few times, you'll get a lot of loss in fidelity with every copy (ie generation) you make. That happens on any recorder and recording, no matter how well everything is set up, but if you want to enforce this effect it does help to start with a bad recording played back on - or record it to - a badly maintained machine.

Problem is however, that it's mostly an uncontrollable effect. You can force it only a bit cause most of the 'effect' is due to age and bad maintenance, so whether you'll get that exact sound you are now looking for is doubtful. It is a gamble.
But maybe (likely) the tapes and the recorders are already in such a bad shape that you don't need to do anything to them

Edit (one of many): I now listened to those disintegration loops, and my guess is that it's really mostly a sort of 'live' generation loss, with a short loop being recorded, played back and re-recorded on the spot, over and over again, like with a tape echo or a nifty set up of a 3-head recorder with monitor function. Brian Eno and Robert Fripp did something like that, called Frippertronics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frippertronics

There have been lot's of different connections over the years, especially on pre-70s equipment. Maybe it has DIN connectors? They look a lot like midi connectors. There's however different types of DIN connections, in some cases the pin connections on one end even needed to be different from the other end. But a local specialized electronics shop should sell standard din plugs, and converter plugs to rca, etc. A google search on the brand and make might give you most info. Sometimes the pin connection is described on the machine itself, and certainly in the manual. Otherwise you'll need to get your multimeter and figure out which pin does what.