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by Goreski_Archive
Don't even think of buying a tape machine on eBay...
One of my clients bought a "Good" PR99, a "good" Studer A-810 and a "good" Otari 5050 off eBay. Ended up spending near $1,000 to fix the PR-99 and the 5050, and the A-810 was junk... too costly to repair!
Buy a good machine from someone who you know and trust, or have a tech go thru it before you have it shipped to you....
As an example you can buy a good 5050 from Audio Images in San Francisco and pay someone like me to check it out and align it for about $ 100 bucks or so, meaning you would spend something like 250 for the machine and 100 bucks to align it and check it out, and if it's junk you're out 100 bucks, no more. If it's good it arrives aligned and OK.
There should be a bunch of 5050's available on the East cost of the US, so shipping will be cheaper there, so see if you can contact a good tech on the East Coast who might have a line on a good Otari 5050 for you, and pay him/her to go thru it for you and OK the deal. Also check England and Gerrmany...
eBay is known for junk machines with major problems. The seller always says "it was working fine when I shipped it..." trying to get out of the fact the machine was junk to begin with. Just avoid eBay.... pay the extra bucks to get a good honest tech to look at a machine before you buy it, it's money well spent in the long run.
5050's a fine little machines. You can buy them anywhere between $ 50 US and about $ 400 US. Average price would be about $250 in fair shape, 300 - 350 aligned and checked out.
Note that these are good semi-pro machines, they sound fine, but are not in the same league as the Ampex ATR 102 or the 440, or the Otari MTR 10 or 12 or the MCI jh110 machines. Of course those machines will cost more!
regards,
Goreski
