Heavy Metal

Corleone and Teac X-10R (1980),  July 2012, No. 162

I am pulled almost daily by a magnetic field to my basement. It's powerful and I can't get loose from its grip.
It's not the call of the laundry room.
It's the sound of sound.

Pioneer RT-1020L (1973)

There are hundreds of audio tapes down here, archived from AC/DC to ZZ Top. Endless hours of my life have been spent since about 1979 in building this library, from records, broadcasts, CDs and, yes, other tapes.
It really is magnetic: Iron oxide tape. Same color as my hair. Little reddish-brown particles baked onto long strips of Mylar, polyester or other compounds. 

They smell like rust. They feel like silk.

A portion of the magnetic field.

You used to be able to buy the reels in stores: Musicland, National Record Mart, Olson's, Radio Shack. Now only two manufacturers remain and the online-only prices are high.
The magnetic field generated by my tapes is detectable from space. It has the military concerned. Watches don't work properly, the actual reading on the electric meter is always a little off.
I hope these magnetic miles of music don't cause cancer.
The cats guard the library but are acting very strange.

Teac A-6300 (1978), one of three.

The tapes keep my heroes close and, in many cases, bring them back to life: Jimi, Miles. Mick. Pete. Ella, Frank, Stan Kenton, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren, The Beatles and thousands more. Rock, blues, jazz, soul, country, classical.

There is a lot of care involved. Gotta keep the tapes boxed in a dry, temperature controlled environment, which gets a little complicated in the springtime. Age, dust and humidity are their enemy. Nothing more frustrating than a reel of sticky, useless tape.

Teac 2340 and Model 3 Tascam mixing board.

Dinosaur technology is required to make then strum and sing: Immense reel-to-reel tape machines made of brass, wood and steel. Each weighs about 60 pounds and each have three fist-sized motors -- necessary for turning heavy aluminum reels with 3,600 feet of tape.

Heavy metal.

Smell like rust, feel like silk.

There are 12 of these four-track beasts and they were (and remain) the best: Teac, Sony and Pioneer. The oldest two are  from the 1960s and I have restored the dozen of them, sometimes more than twice.
Their meters will light up a dark room as they bounce from zero to Tones on Ten.
Hell, their motors will heat a room. There are FANS inside of them. One is full of tubes.

They remain beautiful machines. The engineering is amazing. They were built to last decades.
The only things 'digital' about them are the numbers on their mechanical tape counters.
They are silent running.
You need some element of skill to make them work.  They are neither toys nor gadgets. 

Watches stop working down here.

Best of all, the heroes from all those years ago come out and tune up when I hit the play button. It sounds as if they are right here, in the basement.
Miles Davis was never a talker. "Just play," he says.

Which beast is sexier?

Teac A-6300: $700
Pioneer RT-1020L: $600
Other models also available (Teac X10 R, Sony TC-755, Pioneer RT-1011L, Teac A-6300(3), Teac 2340, Sony 600 Series). Contact hankbonesman@embarqmail.com for details. 

Permanence "A"

When was the last time you bought something that would last for 50-plus years?
This is a Concord HES-40 amplifier and tuner, with inputs for speakers, phono (er, a turntable, kiddies), tape and another auxiliary toy. A friend of mine had this in his basement -- it was his father-in-law's.

It was well-loved enough to have been wrapped in newspapers and stored in its original box.

It was made in the late 1950s in the USA. It weighs about 50 pounds, all brass, steel and aluminum. The glass display is GLASS. The two light bulbs are BULBS, not LEDs. The dials work via nylon STRINGS. Those big shiny towers are vacuum tubes. They have some MERCURY in them and they get warm and toasty and smell like a house fire about to happen. The knobs are Bakelite, a sort of pre-plastic.
I admit to polishing her up a tad. But she worked the first time I plugged her in. I knew she would, because that's just how things were built back then: To last.
Granted, you can't put this in your pocket. Hell, you can barely lift it. Still: How long is that iPod or Blackberry going to hold up? Right. I thought so.

Concord HES-40. 40 watts, stereo. Make an offer.
P.C. 2010 Recorded Works Limited