yo dudes.
an acquiantance of mine gave me three of these Webcor "Royal" mono r2r machines. he said two of them passed audio before he took out some of the tubes for his amp/preamps. they all look damn clean.
anyone know what these things use for tubes?
i have an email out to him as well.
also, i see these are selling for whopping prices like, $5 & $10 on ebay. anyone use these things for something cool, or are they destined for the newmarket, NH landfill? i'm guessing it's the latter, hoping it's the former. they were free though, you know?
they've either gotta make some cool sounds soon or leave my cramped space!
cheers,
Jon
Webcor "Royal" tube r2r - what kind of tubes?/qual
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tubetapexfmr
- steve albini likes it
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These little reel to reels make great resources for parts or you can mod them and turn them into DI boxes, little guitar amps, mic pres, even restore to stock. Basically its up to you how far you want to mod it or not. More than likely you have a power transformer, an output transformer, tube sockets, a chassis, a lot of reusable passive parts like good ol' carbon comp resistors and wax/paper/foil capacitors that make great sounds in guitar amps. Here is what I would do:
1. I'd say as tape recorders they could be cool. It may be neat to restore one stock as a tape machine since you have three of them. You should be able to make one good one out of three. All you will need is probably some kind of belt for the drive motor as there is no way the original is still good. Even if it does work it will die quickly. For tracking to it you will have to get a little creative but it will be easy once you get it down. With a DAW you can play back what you are overdubbng to and record on the tape machine itself in parallel. Once you're done with your overdub then take what you recorded on tape and approximately record the tape track into your daw alongside what you were playing back to. It will not line up exactly right away but with the simple tools of any DAW you can move the file around until it lines up. By using this method you can keep erasing the same tape and use it for dozens of recording passes.
2. With the other two 'parts' units I would build a dedicated guitar amp. Gut the machine and remove all the tape stuff, motors, heads, switch assemblies. Basically strip the tape from the audio path, hard wire switches that switched from record to playback mode as often these circuits shared the same components arranged slightly differently by some switching. Solder on some 1/4" jackas and got to town. You can try using the circuits as is or copy your favorite guitar amp pre circuit and adapt it to the stock power amp circuit. This model may have a 500 ohm secondary in addition to the speaker output. Guess what, if it does you can wire this up as a balanced line level output. You may need a little padding so that you can drive the amp hard and not clip digital inputs. Really with these machiens you have a heck of an opportunity to make some cool sounds. its just going to take a little work.
3. If you decide they are too much trouble then box them up and send them to me, I will pay for FedEx ground shipping to me. Better than throwing them away. Do you have anypictures of them? You may be able to find schematics online.
Jesse
1. I'd say as tape recorders they could be cool. It may be neat to restore one stock as a tape machine since you have three of them. You should be able to make one good one out of three. All you will need is probably some kind of belt for the drive motor as there is no way the original is still good. Even if it does work it will die quickly. For tracking to it you will have to get a little creative but it will be easy once you get it down. With a DAW you can play back what you are overdubbng to and record on the tape machine itself in parallel. Once you're done with your overdub then take what you recorded on tape and approximately record the tape track into your daw alongside what you were playing back to. It will not line up exactly right away but with the simple tools of any DAW you can move the file around until it lines up. By using this method you can keep erasing the same tape and use it for dozens of recording passes.
2. With the other two 'parts' units I would build a dedicated guitar amp. Gut the machine and remove all the tape stuff, motors, heads, switch assemblies. Basically strip the tape from the audio path, hard wire switches that switched from record to playback mode as often these circuits shared the same components arranged slightly differently by some switching. Solder on some 1/4" jackas and got to town. You can try using the circuits as is or copy your favorite guitar amp pre circuit and adapt it to the stock power amp circuit. This model may have a 500 ohm secondary in addition to the speaker output. Guess what, if it does you can wire this up as a balanced line level output. You may need a little padding so that you can drive the amp hard and not clip digital inputs. Really with these machiens you have a heck of an opportunity to make some cool sounds. its just going to take a little work.
3. If you decide they are too much trouble then box them up and send them to me, I will pay for FedEx ground shipping to me. Better than throwing them away. Do you have anypictures of them? You may be able to find schematics online.
Jesse
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I'm Painting Again
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I'm stull using my thrift shop $25 Voice of Music tube RTR..I'm not sure what tubes are in it..I use it as a preamp before a guitar amp, a guitar or key amp, distorted vocals..and record to the tape whenever I want that "old sound" on something..the one I have has speaker level and amp level 1/4" outs and instrument/mic and magnetic head level in..
I really like it..but it's not the fastest thing to get sounds with..but with some futzing I can get some cool effects with it..
I think with the amount of cool stuff you have there Jon..you might think it's just OK but not awesome..but who knows..try it out..
I really like it..but it's not the fastest thing to get sounds with..but with some futzing I can get some cool effects with it..
I think with the amount of cool stuff you have there Jon..you might think it's just OK but not awesome..but who knows..try it out..
jesse,
i forgot to say thanks for the nice reply. thanks! i'll see about the ideas you mentioned, and give you first dibs on 'em if i decide to bail on 'em.
B&W,
i'm guessing i'd likely be willing to futz. the preamp idea souds the most promising, but who knows.
wish i didn't have a million other things to do too!
jon
i forgot to say thanks for the nice reply. thanks! i'll see about the ideas you mentioned, and give you first dibs on 'em if i decide to bail on 'em.
B&W,
i'm guessing i'd likely be willing to futz. the preamp idea souds the most promising, but who knows.
wish i didn't have a million other things to do too!
jon
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I'm Painting Again
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- Contact:
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I'm Painting Again
- zen recordist
- Posts: 7086
- Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 2:15 am
- Location: New York, New York
- Contact:
Some might make good mic preamps..I know Ubertar and RodC on this board might be able to give you poiters on turning it over like that..Jon Nolan wrote:
B&W,
i'm guessing i'd likely be willing to futz. the preamp idea souds the most promising, but who knows.
wish i didn't have a million other things to do too!
jon
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