Episode: 2737
Title: HPR2737: My Pioneer RT-707 Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2737/hpr2737.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 16:02:01

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This is HPR episode 2,737 entitled My Pioneer RT-777 Realtor Real Tape Deck.
It is hosted by John Kulp and is about 23 minutes long and Karima Clean Flag.
The summary is an intro to more of my legacy audio equipment.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
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Hey everybody, this is John Kulp and Lafayette Louisiana coming back to you after quite a long time away.
I'm very sorry for my long absence but it's been very busy at work and I just haven't had time.
I haven't even had time to listen to HPR in quite a long time and so I'm sorry to have been kind of out of the loop for a while.
But I have been keeping up with the mailing list and looking at comments on feeds, the comment feed and stuff like that.
So I'm a little bit aware of what's going on.
But I did get Ken Fallon's recent call for shows and I'm responding to that now.
I think I can manage to get at least one show done before the semester really gets rolling.
But then I'll probably be neck deep in it and won't be able to do it again for a while.
The topic of today's episode is going to be another in my series of legacy audio episodes.
And it is about a real to real tape deck.
This is a pioneer.
Let's see if I can find the model number.
Shoot.
Oh boy.
I can't see well enough in this room and with my bifocals, pardon an old man not being able to figure it out.
It's like a pioneer something 707.
I'll figure it out and put it in the show notes.
I've got the user manual for it and everything.
I've not had it that long, maybe ten years or so.
It was given to me by one of my bosses, two bosses ago.
The chair of the music department where I am on faculty.
Whenever he got his job as a dean off in Texas, he was getting rid of stuff and he asked me,
what I like to have this real to real tape deck and I said, yes sir, I would like to have that.
And I didn't have any tapes at the time, but I did actually have some tapes back in my parents' house from when I was a kid.
Because when I was little, the only tape deck we had on our stereo system was a big old teak real to real.
Some people pronounce it teak, maybe teac is the brand name.
That was the tape deck we had.
We had a San Sui receiver, if I recall right.
I forget the brand name of the turntable, but we had a receiver turntable and tape deck.
The tape deck was real to real, not cassette.
My dad had bought the real to real tape deck in the 1960s and I don't know how much he paid for it,
but I think it was quite a lot of money.
Anyway, I was thrilled to get a real to real tape deck and I went online and bought some pre-recorded seven inch tapes.
I've got some over here. I think I bought on eBay maybe a set of like five.
I've got two by the Spanish singer Victoria de Los Angeles singing songs of Catalunio and then Spanish folk songs and Sephardic songs.
Two of opera highlights with the same singer Victoria de Los Angeles.
And then this odd thing, Oklahoma.
It's like a symphonic suite of tunes from Oklahoma. It's real cheesy.
I think that came in the set or else I ordered it separately. I don't really remember.
But then I also, when I went back and visited my parents one time, I asked if they would mind if I took the tapes.
And they said, now I mean our tape deck is broken now. We can't play them. So yeah, go ahead and take them.
So I've got like 10 or 15 of these tapes that my parents had made back in the 60s and 70s, maybe early 80s too.
It was quite a while before they got a cassette deck because you know how parents are.
There's nothing wrong with this tape deck. It works just fine. Why would it get some newfangled cassette deck when we could just use this?
This is a very high quality tape deck. Audio files, blah, blah, blah.
So anyway, they made tapes. What they would do is they buy records and then they would transfer them to these seven inch tapes.
And when you recorded on the slow speed, you could fit like four or five albums on one of these tapes.
Let's see, these are quarter inch tapes, seven inch reels, and it says 1800 feet long.
And I've got at least one tape over here that's 2400 feet long. So I reckon you could really put a lot of music on that one.
Let's see. And then they've got this little chart on the back that tells you how much time you can put on a tape, depending on the speed that you're recording and the length of the tape.
So an 1800 foot tape recording at three and three quarters inch per second. I think that on my tape deck here, they put it in the centimeters.
That will be 9.5 centimeters per second. You can get three hours. I think that's right. I don't know.
Anyway, there are two speeds on this tape deck and you select between them by pushing in this button.
The unpressed button gives you 19 centimeters per second, or I think that's normally like these.
The commercially produced tapes are done at seven and a half inches per second. So the higher speed recording actually gives you better sound quality.
And so commercially produced ones are going to do it at the higher speed. And so I guess the seven and a half inches per second is 19 centimeters per second.
And then if you push the button in, it will record or play back slower at 9.5 centimeters per second.
It's a very cool looking tape deck. This is definitely more modern than the one my parents had.
This one has a brushed steel facing to it. And the take up reel that I have, I've got two take up reels. One is plastic and the other one, the one that came with the tape deck is a brushed steel pioneer branded take up reel.
It's got two analog level indicators that are backlit by little light bulbs. And when the music is playing, the little needles bounce up and down. It's really cool to see.
It has, it's got a number of buttons. It's got two microphone quarter inch microphone inputs on the front, one quarter inch headphone jack.
It's got level adjustment knobs for microphone and for line in depending on how you're recording.
It's got the, the place where the tape goes underneath to hit the tape heads is covered by a brushed steel plate that says pioneer on it.
And then it's got pinch rollers that might need cleaning and a little cap stand and all that kind of stuff.
Let's see. I'm not sure what else to say about the, the look of the thing. I think what I'll do is load up a tape and play a little bit. This is just one of the tapes that my parents made.
I won't play very much. I know Ken is concerned about the violation of copyright laws with music playing on the show and everything.
So I'll just play a few seconds of it just to kind of let you hear how it sounds. So I've got the tape in my hand.
This is a Scotch brand magnetic tape extra length 1800 feet quarter inch tape silicon lubricated 1.0 millimeter polyester backing.
7 inch real splice free professional. That's, and the tape cost $2.15 back in the 1960s or whenever they bought this. So it's not, not exactly cheap.
Let's see. So I've got the tape on my hand and now what you have to do is put the reel onto the left hand spindle.
This is the supply reel. The supply reel is the one that's got the tape on it already. The take up reel is on the other side and the trick is to thread the tape.
It's got a lead on it. It's not, I mean, it's not recordable. It's just like little lead. Here you go under the little guide post.
Make sure I don't twist it.
You can see why cassettes caught on and became popular because you could just pop the thing into the thing close the door and off you go.
With this, you have to thread the tape through the thing. It's a little bit like putting the thread on a sewing machine.
You've got to go all around the right things in the right way or else it's going to get jacked up and it won't play right.
So it goes under the guide thing over the pinch roller underneath the tape heads and then over the pinch roller and under the right hand guide thing.
And then the most difficult part is wrapping it around the take up reel and getting it started so that the tape doesn't slide back off.
I'm getting better at it. I think I was probably better at this one. I was nine or ten years old because I did it more often.
But there's a little crevice you can put the tape into, but I kind of like to try to get it going without using that.
If you're really careful, you can kind of wrap it around itself and give it a couple of turns and it'll stay put.
Actually, it's not doing right now. I'm going to have to pull that back off. I didn't do a good job.
I'm just going to put it into the little crevice.
You can, oops, I fell all the way down there. I wish I had a video of you me doing this. It's a little bit amusing.
Okay, so I've got the tape in my hand trying to get it around the take up reel and then I need to pull the very end of it into this little crevice where it'll kind of catch on there.
And then, turning the take up reel around. Oopsy, man, I messed up again. Sorry about that.
This is going to be very entertaining radio listening to me try to get a take up reel threaded.
There's got to be a technique.
Sometimes it works real easy and sometimes I really have a hard time doing it.
It's all about the placement of your fingers when you start turning the take up reel to get it going.
Okay, maybe I'll get it on the third try here.
It's inside the crevice now.
Maybe if I hold that with my right finger instead of my left, I'll tighten it up and now start turning.
Okay, I got it this time.
Take up reel is set and I'm ready to press play.
Here we go.
Okay, so this tape has on it a few albums.
The first one is by Flatten Scruggs, a famous bluegrass duo.
The next one is by Roy Clark.
One of the country artists my parents really liked and then on the other side is Chet Atkins.
The thing about these kind of tapes is that you can record on both sides or both directions as it were.
They're four track tapes and so what you do is you record until the almost the entire tape goes off of the supply reel onto the take up reel.
And then you can record going backwards all the way the other way and that way it records on two sides for cassette tapes.
It was recorded on two sides by like flipping the tape over.
Anyway, listen to what it sounds like if you have the wrong speed on playback.
So right now it's playing at slow speed.
My parents always recorded on slow because you could fit more music on there.
But here's what happens when you turn it to fast.
And then when you want to fast forward between songs I mean normally you would be able to...
You might want to make a note of the tape counter on there so you know where the various songs are.
One thing I've discovered is the tape counter is not functioning on this tape deck so that's not possible.
You just kind of hunt and hope for the best.
So I'm going to stop the tape and then fast forward.
I'm not sure if you can hear it fast forwarding there.
It's going very fast.
These reels are spinning.
I've stopped it and I'm going to press play again.
Oops, looks like I came at just to the end of some song or another.
Okay, I'm going to stop it and you can just press the other arrow to turn back the other way.
Let's see if they've got anything on this far end of the tape going the other direction.
What do they do?
I think that might be one of those Roy Clark and Buck Owens records or something.
Anyway, I'm going to stop this tape and what I thought I would try to do is do any further talking by actually recording my podcast onto a real to real tape.
So I'm going to hit rewinding.
You got to be watching it because when the tape goes off of the take up reel,
it just starts spinning and flapping.
You might have been able to hear that when it stopped just now.
So the take up reel is empty.
I'm pulling the 7-inch reel back off of the left spindle and putting it back in its box here.
One thing I really love about these tapes, I mean, they sound good, first of all.
But I just like watching those reels spin.
It's fun to do.
I mean, when you're listening to music always as electronic files, you no longer have the physical sensation of some of the older audio media.
I mean, records, you can see them turning around.
You can see the tone arm getting further and further across the record.
With cassettes, you can see the little things spinning around.
You see these giant wheels spinning.
And it's a really cool thing to watch.
All right.
So now I'm going to put a tape on here.
It's another one of my parents.
I think they've got the nutcracker suite on here.
I'm just going to record over it because it doesn't matter to me.
I've learned since I've been using this thing for the last couple of weeks
and been reading about real to real tape on the internet and stuff.
I've learned that there's kind of a thing now for people who like real to real tapes.
One thing they'll do is if they're at an estate sale or at a thrift store or something
and they find some of these old consumer tapes where people have made their own transfers.
They'll buy them and just listen to them.
They call it voyeur listening.
You just buy people's compilation tapes and just listen to what they put on there
just for the fun of it to see what they did.
And I've got to say it was kind of enlightening to look back at the tape on the pile
that's called John's tape.
When I was like nine years old, I had my own tape.
My dad gave me a tape that I could use to record stuff onto.
And I would record stuff off of my records to listen to them.
The idea was that instead of playing the record over and over again,
I could put it on a tape and that way I would extend the life of my record.
But I also recorded songs off the radio.
And it was interesting to hear what songs I felt were worthy of putting on the tape.
There was something by Journey, something by the Jay Giles band.
I think a Rick Springfield song, a Ronnie James Dio song.
It was either him or Black Sabbath.
I'm not sure which it was, but it was curious.
It kind of brought back memories.
It was nice to hear these things.
Okay, I think I've got...
I'm going to get this one on the first try, you know.
Okay, the take up reel on the recording tape is threaded.
It's in place. Excellent.
Okay, so now to start this recording, what the way I'm going to do this,
I found that the microphone inputs on the front of the tape deck did not seem to work, right?
They had noise, they didn't get any signal, whatever.
So, I'm using the line input on the back of the machine that has two RCA,
so the red and white RCA inputs.
Actually, that might not even be color coded, I think it just is left and right.
But it's got RCA inputs and I've got a little mixing board
that only has one microphone input, and then it's got two main outputs to go from a quarter inch,
and a long time ago I'd made quarter inch to RCA cables for a different application,
but I use those here.
So, out of the mixing board, it's going to the back of the line input,
and then I've got a...
I think this... yeah, this is my Sure SM-58 microphone.
And what you got to do is the first thing you do is press pause on the tape deck,
and then make sure the tape's going in the right direction, and press pause,
and then I push these two buttons that say record mode,
and then I'm going to turn off the speakers and put on headphones,
so that when I push the button to listen to the tape monitor,
it won't get feedback.
Alright, so now I've got the headphones on, and the speakers are off.
I'm going to push tape source.
When I do that, I should start seeing, as I'm talking,
I'm seeing the indicator on the left channel jumping.
So, I'm going to start recording on the tape deck now.
I think I'll keep recording on my Zoom just in case,
but I would really like to be able to put this tape recording onto the podcast as well.
Here we go.
So, I'm going to wait for a few seconds of silence there,
and now I'm talking on the tape.
It looks like the level is probably okay.
It's only going to record on the left channel, which is okay for hacker public radio,
because it's going to be mixed down to mono anyway.
If I wanted it to be a stereo recording, I would have to have another microphone,
but this is going to be mono.
There was something else I was going to say about this just before I started the recording,
but then I forgot what it was.
It's a little bit strange to be recording this onto the tape
with the intention of having it be part of the podcast,
because of course, I'm going to have to transfer the tape back to MP3,
but I'm curious to see how it's going to come out.
I entertained the notion of actually just recording it onto a 7-inch reel,
and then mailing that all the way to Ken Ballon,
and seeing if he could actually get that onto the air,
but I decided not to put him through that.
He might have found it an interesting and fun challenge,
but actually, I'm sure some of the old timers actually still have a equipment that would play this.
I bet Dave Morris has a tape deck that could handle these tapes
and might find it fun to play them again.
Well, there's not a whole lot more else I want to say.
I ended up saying almost all I wanted to about Real Dreal tapes while I was setting it up,
but I hope you're enjoying hearing about this.
I really like Legacy Audio.
I like playing records. In my office at work, I play records almost every day,
and I'm really happy to be able to play music off of these tapes.
It's nostalgic.
I remember my parents listening to all this music when I was a kid,
and I had forgotten about some of these things.
Groups like The Stattler Brothers,
which is a country vocal quartet that my mom really loved.
Whenever I hear them, I think of my mother,
and she's still alive and everything,
but it gives me fond memories.
The music that people choose to preserve on tape for these kind of mixed tapes,
it's an indication of what they like.
It's kind of a look into their musical soul, so it's fun.
I might actually do some of that voyeur listening myself apart from these tapes from my own family.
If I ever find them at the thrift store or at a yard sale,
or in a state sale, or something like that.
So I think it's probably time to sign off.
This has been John Culpe for Hacker Public Radio. Glad to be back,
and I will talk to you guys again some other time.
I don't know when, but now I'm going to press stop on the tape.
Bye y'all.
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