Otari was one of the last brands to manufacturer a new tape deck. Founded by Former Teac Engineer, Masayuki Hosoda in 1964, his company produced some of the best tape decks ever made. It may sound funny but Otari is widely considered by industry professionals as the Toyota Tacoma of tape decks! The reason why is that they learned the hard lessons from Studer/Teac/Tascam etc and as a result built one of the best tape decks out there. Also, because of this, the availability of parts is much more widely available; not to mention the serviceability of this deck is much better than say a Technics. One of our favorite decks! 

*Key point. We love this deck for the new or experienced listener... why? Because it has the versatility to playback both 1/2 and 1.4 track tapes. This way you don't loose out if you have a 1/4 tape collection. Not to mention, it is also one of the, if not the most, user friendly tape decks out there. 

Summary of Restoration work... 1 year warranty provided (on non-customer related issues, RRH reserves the right to inspect and determine.)

*Please see real time frequency response plot video. 

• Disassembled, lubed capstan motor, glued stator position sensing coils
• Reflowed cold solder joints on capstan servo PCB & audio board 
• Cleaned all controls
• Repaired area of control PCB with corrosion damage from degrading foam
• Installed relapped head assembly; relap by JRF Magnetic Sciences
• Installed athan corp pinch roller & Set pressure to 6lbs
• Re-surfaced capstan
• Rotated static guides and lifters
  
• Set reel table height
• Set capstan motor speed @ all 3 speeds
  
• Replaced all four VU meter bulbs
• Aligned all 3 speeds repro, set for 15 & 7.5 ips record
• Aligned repro (MID flux 250nWb/m NAB EQ 15, 7.5, 3.75 IPS)
• Aligned record at 15, 7.5 IPS with RTM - SM911 tape 3dB over bias @ 10K 15 IPS.
• 15 IPS LF comp set at 50hz
• Cosmetic restoration performed - new wood sides, lettering to original Otari specs. 
• NOTE: This unit has the optional balanced input and output transformers. installed. The input transformer PCB appears to pad the input gain on the line  in XLRs down about 12dB to accept a +4dBu signal. I bypassed it when calibrating the input gain. It may be an issue if interfacing with consumer unbalanced gear. In this case either use a bump box (Aphex 124, Tascam LA-xx) or bypass the input transformer.

Dim's for shelf consideration

68 Lbs
(H) 27 (D) 12 (W) 17 - inches