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New to Nagra!!


Haggy38

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14 hours ago, Spectreman said:

Cool.  Pioneer gear is very nice.

But my main tape deck is actually a Tascam 42 2-track, this is bigger & a lot heavier than the Pioneer deck !

I have a Nagra III and Nagra E also, but the Nagra III still has a few issues...

 

 

Tascam!! Great professional tape decks, I just sold my Tascam 48OB, really nice transport and build to last

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8 hours ago, JonG said:

You can buy rca-banana cables on eBay or amazon for very little FYI. Shouldn’t be a problem. They are still fairly common in the hi-fi world. 

 

Thanks I will try to buy a good quality banana plugs and the touchel adaptor, still looking for a power supply I can adapt and don't get to much interference.

 

 

Gustavo

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Well I got some components to start my banana cables for recording and playback, presentation is important, theres a guy(Mikefilmsound) selling those cables for Nagra but I do prefer to do my own.

 

Good quality banana plugs

RCA connector

Metal Braid(Termination)

 

Gustavo

 

PS, Sorry to be so annoying with 1.000 questions, Im very exited about my Nagra III

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Yep, that cable should do it.  The sound quality of the Nagra III is pretty good, considering its age.

Great looking Tascam 48 !  Very happy with my 42 deck, but it did need a lot of cleaning & maintenance to get working correctly, and a new capstan motor that had worn bearings.  Lucky I got it off a friend for pretty cheap. I use it a lot for recording & playback.

 

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6 minutes ago, Spectreman said:

Yep, that cable should do it.  The sound quality of the Nagra III is pretty good, considering its age.

Great looking Tascam 48 !  Very happy with my 42 deck, but it did need a lot of cleaning & maintenance to get working correctly, and a new capstan motor that had worn bearings.  Lucky I got it off a friend for pretty cheap. I use it a lot for recording & playback.

 

Great to see people taking care off for this old machines, some may need recap, new pinch rollers, demag and cleaning, maintenance is important to keep them working properly.

 

I think reel to reel keeps its magic for its sound, but all the procedures you need to learn how to use them, splice tape, leaders, demag etc this is the different between everything else out there.

 

 

 

Gustavo

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It seems to be in a pretty good shape; it will be hard to find a 55 years old piece of equipment that is in mint condition. But the scratches are part of the history...

 

If you are used to seeing  "normal" recorders, you will notice that one thing is missing: The flywheel, that normally is necessary for keeping the speed constant and avoid flutter. In the Nagras there is no flywheel, instead Kudelski went all in, and used a powerful DC motor that was electronically controlled by a light weight tacho disc and a sophisticated electronic control system. By keeping the rotating system very light, he avoided having the normal gyro-effect of the heavy flywheel, and  that ensured that the Nagra was almost completely insensitive to movement in any direction when recording. You could walk, you could run, you could bump it around, all without variations of speed, and that was essential if you wanted to record on the move. 

 

The Nagra IV/4.2 systems were more advanced, but they were in many ways evolutions of the Nagra III, which was a truly revolutionary recorder...

 

 

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1 hour ago, dela said:

It seems to be in a pretty good shape; it will be hard to find a 55 years old piece of equipment that is in mint condition. But the scratches are part of the history...

 

If you are used to seeing  "normal" recorders, you will notice that one thing is missing: The flywheel, that normally is necessary for keeping the speed constant and avoid flutter. In the Nagras there is no flywheel, instead Kudelski went all in, and used a powerful DC motor that was electronically controlled by a light weight tacho disc and a sophisticated electronic control system. By keeping the rotating system very light, he avoided having the normal gyro-effect of the heavy flywheel, and  that ensured that the Nagra was almost completely insensitive to movement in any direction when recording. You could walk, you could run, you could bump it around, all without variations of speed, and that was essential if you wanted to record on the move. 

 

The Nagra IV/4.2 systems were more advanced, but they were in many ways evolutions of the Nagra III, which was a truly revolutionary recorder...

 

 

Thanks!! I was very lucky, it’s working, FF, RW and playback, tonight will try recording, heads looks ok to me, I’m very happy.

 

Just polished the acrylic cover with Novus 2 and wow, and S-721H for heads and pinch roller, it’s getting there.

 

Gustavo

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Hi guys,

 

I'm making the recording cable, got one technical question, Nagra accepts two banana plugs, one for ground and one for signal, should I merged both (Source) Right and Letf channels in one cable? Or should I choose right or left channel only?

 

Thanks,

Gustavo

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Looks clean, man, congrats!  Fills my heart with nostalgia!   The heads are fairly worn but if you aren't going to do a lot of recording on it they'll hold you for a while.  But you gotta ditch that 16mm film takeup reel right now--that really make you look like a dweeb!   Your III looks like someone took good care of it, I hope it sounds great!  Re: summing stereo into mono....best is to actually mix it down in a mixer, but for testing you can just sum the L+R in a combiner cable.   This isn't what you'd want to do on an ongoing basis (like for a permanent hookup to your other, stereo, gear), for that you should get some sort of small 2>1 mixer.  If you want to stay All-Nagra look for a Nagra BMII, will match the look (and technology) of your III perfectly.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Philip Perkins said:

Looks clean, man, congrats!  Fills my heart with nostalgia!   The heads are fairly worn but if you aren't going to do a lot of recording on it they'll hold you for a while.  But you gotta ditch that 16mm film takeup reel right now--that really make you look like a dweeb!   Your III looks like someone took good care of it, I hope it sounds great!  Re: summing stereo into mono....best is to actually mix it down in a mixer, but for testing you can just sum the L+R in a combiner cable.   This isn't what you'd want to do on an ongoing basis (like for a permanent hookup to your other, stereo, gear), for that you should get some sort of small 2>1 mixer.  If you want to stay All-Nagra look for a Nagra BMII, will match the look (and technology) of your III perfectly.

 

 

Hi Philip,

 

Heads still got some live fortunately, just deoxit all potentiometers and deep cleaning, it sounds amazing!! I will just do a couple of tapes for occasional playback, I got some 7in reels and this week will receive 5in, actually I just bought a beautiful metal reels, it will look astonishing!!

 

Regardind the Nagra mixer, wow way to expensive for me...... Thanks for the tips.

 

 

Gustavo

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6 hours ago, Haggy38 said:

Hi guys,

 

I'm making the recording cable, got one technical question, Nagra accepts two banana plugs, one for ground and one for signal, should I merged both (Source) Right and Letf channels in one cable? Or should I choose right or left channel only?

 

Thanks,

Gustavo

 

Not quite sure what you mean here Gustavo - the Nagra is mono so it's up to you if you want to work with a mono channel or sum some kind of stereo input (presumably line level and already mixed) into it - or indeed send a mono signal identically twice to a stereo input. What exactly am I missing in what you want to do with using a mono vintage tape machine (knowing you have stereo tape machines to hand) ?

 

Jez

 

Just realised Philip is answering your need but still not sure why you would want to 'combine' stereo onto a Nagra III ...

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3 hours ago, The Immoral Mr Teas said:

 

Not quite sure what you mean here Gustavo - the Nagra is mono so it's up to you if you want to work with a mono channel or sum some kind of stereo input (presumably line level and already mixed) into it - or indeed send a mono signal identically twice to a stereo input. What exactly am I missing in what you want to do with using a mono vintage tape machine (knowing you have stereo tape machines to hand) ?

 

Jez

 

Just realised Philip is answering your need but still not sure why you would want to 'combine' stereo onto a Nagra III ...

Hi Jez,

 

Sorry for any confusion here, I wasn't sure if I should sum Right and Left input signal on one cable or will be the same as using one of them for recording, I know it's a mono machine but music as far as I know is not exactly the same on both channels. Its merely for display and joy, not performance.

 

Gustavo

1 hour ago, Philip Perkins said:

There are lots of other small mixers avail used if you want to mix down stereo to mono for your Nagra.  APretty much any will do.  But the BMII would look cool with your III

Completely agreed with you Philip, that BMII mixer its beautiful, probably in the future I will consider buy it, it took me years to wait for the right moment and budget to buy this Nagra III, they're high audio collectors demand and prices are proportional.

 

 

Gustavo

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Last night I did some light reading regarding the pilot from Nagra III, I saw some videos and some of them the pilot works on playback, could be any modification or just an update on later models? Is there any way to do it?

 

 

 

Gustavo

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The pilot indicator will show if a pilot signal is present on the recording being played. If there is no pilot signal (which there isn´t, if you didn´t input a pilot signal...). it will not be activated. 

 

But it shouldn´t be a problem; you have absolutely no need for recording a pilot signal. It is only needed if you have a (very old) film camera connected.

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8 hours ago, dela said:

The pilot indicator will show if a pilot signal is present on the recording being played. If there is no pilot signal (which there isn´t, if you didn´t input a pilot signal...). it will not be activated. 

 

But it shouldn´t be a problem; you have absolutely no need for recording a pilot signal. It is only needed if you have a (very old) film camera connected.

Thanks Dela for the clarification, I would like to see the pilot working just on playback but it's intended for other use....

 

Gustavo

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Hi Guys,

 

Nagra III project is done, small details. Playback RCA to Banana is working perfectly, just hooked it up to my Pioneer Rack and sounds fantastic even at lowest speed, very happy now. Thanks to all you guys for the tips!!

 

 

Gustavo

 

 

 

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