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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: flphish on February 24, 2009, 10:03:12 PM
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I am in the process of buying a DAT player to use in my home. I have been recording with a Sony M-1 for many years now and would like to get something to listen to my old DAT's with. I was hoping to get some opinions on the various decks out there. I have someone local who has a Sony DTC-75ES they are looking to sell at a decent price. He seems to be a reputable dealer and says he knows the guy who had the DAT. He had a bunch of money, bought a lot of stuff and never really used it. It is still in the box he bought it in apparently. My other option is getting a TASCAM DA20 or Fostex D-5 from ebay. I am not looking to spend more than $75 and that does not seem to be an issue. If anyone can offer any opinions, especially about the Sony DTC-75ES (local pick up makes it much more appealing) I would appreciate it. Thanks!
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Why not use your M1 for digi transfers to your computer? Just do a one-time transfer.
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I have a lot of old dat tapes. I transferred a good deal of them but there are quite a few I never did. I don't want to use my M-1 for that workload. Don't mind spending the money to get a stand alone unit just for occasional listening...
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I have owned a DA-20mkII for a while and like it a lot. Personally I would pick up whatever large unit has the least hours on it at the price point I find "worth it". The Fostex's have AES/EBU on them which can be useful, and if memory serves, the Sony's tend to have optical out if that is important. That unit you mention locally might be an early 90's model so it could have a lot of hours on it, which could be OK if the heads were replaced at some point and it is otherwise well taken care of.
Just my 2 rusty cents!
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be careful with the tascam da20 on ebay, there is no way to display hours.....
the sony r500 is a tank and if you can get it, you will be pleased at it's build.
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Is there a way to check hours on a Sony device?
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Get an R500 and you can display hours on these decks.
If the hours are not listed in the auction, ask the seller before you bid. You can access the hours from the main menu on the R500 - It's called Drum Hours I believe.
There have been alot of R500's on ebay lately and alot with less than 200 hours.
These sell for about $125-150 or so. A little out of your range but they are a tank!
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Any one happen to know when they stopped making the Sony DTC-75ES?
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I have owned, in order:
Tascam DA-20MKII
Fostex D-5
Sony R500
get a SonyR500 if you can put together more spending cash... seriously
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I am on my 2nd used DA-20 which is going strong, after having used the other one constantly for about 4 years.
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having owned and run d*mn near every home dat around, i say the R500 HANDS DOWN! both of mine have over 3k hours on them w/o needing service. i have buried fostex, panasonics, jvc, sony consumer decks, otari's, etc. sony R series just keep on keeping on. ask paul plotnick. and i have almost 30k hrs of dats to playback and the R500's track where others can't.
just my 2 cents
neil
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I have a DAT (Sony DTC-59ES) that I'll sell you for cheap. I really have no use for it, all my DATs are going to new homes...
I got it used and sent it to Pro-Digital a few years ago for a full tune-up. But we had a cat, and I smoke...
PM me if you want it. I think we can work out a price, depending on shipping. I'm not looking to get much...
Terry
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I have a Sony PCM 2700, Sony A8, Panasonic SV3800, and HHB PortaDat, and only the last one now seems reliably to play my old tapes, regardless of which machine they were recorded on. The rest mostly just spit out digital hash, giving the impression they are simply unable to read the tapes. My point being that you may find that a perfectly good DAT deck may not actually play your old tapes, due to perhaps some kind of tracking differences or whatever. I don't know whether there's a standard technique for fixing such problems?
[Edit - it occurs to me that a sensible buying technique would be to select one of your old tapes in typical condition, but one that's not too precious in case it gets graunched, and take that with you with a pair of headphones to anyone who offers a machine for sale, to test compatibility. If dealing with someone here, I guess you could send the tape and trust them to test it.]
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Any one happen to know when they stopped making the Sony DTC-75ES?
According to the DAT-Heads market posting (http://solorb.com/dat-heads/MarketPosting.html) the 75-ES was replaced by the 57-ES, which came out in July of 1992.
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I have a Fostex D-5. I bought it used about 6 years ago and only used it to transfer tapes to CDR. About 2 years ago, it started to eat tapes after rewinding them to the beginning. I can't afford a repair, but I don't use it anymore since I went to a card recorder. I have heard that the R500 is the better home deck, so try to get it if you can. These days DAT decks are throw-away/cheap.
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Whatever you get try to make sure it's in good condition (duh). No deck is perfect; once a beautiful pristine DSBD Dave Matthews / Tim Reynolds show got crunched in a buddy's R-500. Worst of all, that was a loaner tape, and guess what, we never got loaned tapes from that guy again :(