Non-functionnal reel-to-reel: should I fix before selling?

[burn]

Hey ! I'm doing a cleanup and have a Otari MX5050 BII2 and a TEAC A-3300SX that were in storage for 15+ years. Both are non-functionnal right now.

I'm wondering if I should get them serviced/fixed and sell them at higher price or if I should let them go as-is for less money ?

I dont have any idea of how much it worth now, and how much I should expect to invest to get them running properly. I don't now as well if there is really a demand for those machine...

Any opinion/advices are welcome!

Thx

[The Scum]

Can you either fix it yourself, or find a tech who still works on tape machines? They aren't as easy to find as they used to be.

You can do the research for sold listings on Ebay & reverb to see what sort of price you could expect in a sale. But check for completed & sold listings, not active listings.

Then you can balance the cost of the repair vs the expected sale.


I recently did a similar cleanup. There were projects like that where it became clear that I was never going to come back to them...it required less of my time & attention to just give some of them away on Craigslist.

[kslight]

I would do basic diagnosis myself - such as checking the belt and adjusting tension; depending on the actual issue.

I don’t have tons of reel to reel tech experience, but when I took my Tascam 388 in it was a quite expensive ordeal.

If you’re unable to fix it yourself, I’d just sell it as is. If it’s not working now, you could pay someone to get it working well enough to find it has more issues. IMHO

[drumsound]

I'd look for listings to see if anyone else is in the same boat, to give you an idea of what they're going for. If you're not the handy type, I'd suggest selling them as is/ for parts. You'd probably spend more on a tech than you'd be able to sell them for. But, there are probably folks out there who would buy parts machines if the price was decent.

[markjazzbassist]

selling an item as "just serviced" and including the receipt will yield a substantial bonus to your selling price. with old tech like these, most of the people who buy it don't know how to fix it, and don't know anyone who can. they want working condition, and IME will pay top dollar for it.

on the other hand if you just need the stuff gone, sell as is and set your price accordingly.

[floid]

If you service it yourself, what's your time worth?
What's a good tech's time worth for the same service?
Is a good tech available?
What's the return on investment?

There's an ancillary to "good, fast, cheap: pick 2" in there.

[Scodiddly]

If you want to learn how to do the repairs, then that's a great opportunity to go through that and then sell the machine for more $$$.

But I wouldn't recommend paying somebody else unless you *know* there's demand for a refurbished machine. You can probably learn a lot about that possibility just by asking a prospective tech if they've got customers lined up but no machines to fix up.