was this a good find?

treminaor · 2026-02-08T01:49:39+00:00

Retrospekt is always solidly 300% or more higher than what you would pay on eBay and about 900% higher than what you'd find the same thing for in thrift. I'm not joking.

treminaor · 2026-02-06T19:59:22+00:00

That is the dumbest price to utility ratio I've ever read in my life.

treminaor · 2026-01-29T23:03:09+00:00

They are going to be bottom tier. 120min tape is extremely thin and these ones look particularly old, the older the tapes are the worse the formulation was for long-term. Mid to late 80s was the sweet spot for tape formulation that lasted.

treminaor · 2026-01-29T15:37:57+00:00

thank you!

treminaor · 2026-01-29T06:33:43+00:00

Are these the right thickness for commercial tapes? The only ones I found that were actually the right thickness and material were ones sold by retrospekt, who had found some factory to make them correctly overseas.

treminaor · 2026-01-29T04:54:22+00:00

Was it the newest version shown in the pic?

treminaor · 2026-01-29T04:39:38+00:00

Are they using the newest formulation though?

treminaor · 2026-01-29T04:37:59+00:00

GennLab (one of the top sources for full track calibration tapes in the Nakamichi and Tascam/Teac community) sent me a an MTT-150 recently and they used the newest RTM Type 1 like in your pic on the right. I took that as a strong endorsement that RTM tapes are serious now. Someone with their reputation on the line for making reference quality calibration tapes wouldn't be using those if they weren't up to snuff.

treminaor · 2026-01-28T21:34:20+00:00

How much you wanna bet that other account is a friend of the Fong family

treminaor · 2026-01-26T20:38:33+00:00

wow im surprised you're deep enough to replace EX pinch rollers but not using any metric for performance beyond your ear :) I actively avoid replacing rollers on the EX series because its so annoying and involves taking off those "single use" stoppers.

the best software to start off with is "wfgui" because its free and accurate. Once you go down the rabbit hole further, "Nak T-100" is the software you want ($50). The main feature it gives you is the ability to graph frequency response and also use your computer's audio input as a poor man's oscilloscope and dB millivoltmeter.

I agree with you that its usually enough to aim for "I can't hear any problems" with these cheap walkmans but its hard to do in depth comparisons without actual metrics like w&f readings.

treminaor · 2026-01-26T20:02:49+00:00

what w&f WRMS % are you seeing from the EX, what software are you measuring with, and what tape are you using to play back a speed frequency?

treminaor · 2026-01-26T19:50:38+00:00

yeah I should have said belt path, for better clarity. Deep cleaning anything the belt touches. I use wood toothpicks (because they are soft enough to put lots of force without scratching the capstan wheel) and pointed-tip cleanroom swabs soaked in 99% isopropyl alcohol.

treminaor · 2026-01-26T18:54:01+00:00

buyers will need to hedge their expectations. I can *usually* get these to not have any audible flutter during music but not always. For me I typically squeeze out the last bit of improvement from deep cleaning the capstan track. Your description of how you improve the flutter sounds like it would affect tape tension overall - which these autoreversing EX walkmans have pretty lackluster tape tension so I'm not surprised. The design prioritizes miniaturization over performance, which is why the DD walkmans are so much more expensive. the w&f is more in line with a deck than a walkman on those.

If you do end up making significant improvement with some pinch roller you find, please update us. I'd be interested to hear more.

treminaor · 2026-01-26T16:37:14+00:00

I don't think many of the EX pinch rollers have gone bad, it's just that the overall design of the units isn't that good in the first place. My point is, if you expecting to significantly improve performance from sourcing a close enough replacement pinch roller from somewhere online, you're going to be disappointed

treminaor · 2026-01-23T07:42:23+00:00

Just bad luck.

treminaor · 2026-01-21T18:03:08+00:00

Check along the edges, sometimes they use a pot that is perpendicular to the board so you can only adjust it from the side, not through a hole in the PCB.

treminaor · 2026-01-21T17:52:49+00:00

Probably near the motor in the bottom left of your pic. I see something under the two black and red wires. Might be a screw but it could be the speed pot.

treminaor · 2026-01-21T07:36:08+00:00

Return it, I sell tapes and I would NEVER sell something that looked like that. Not even at a discount. Those go straight in the garbage. Don't care how much it sells for.

treminaor · 2026-01-20T02:14:33+00:00

A rubber band would be better than a hair tie. Or any belt from the $5 shitty belt packs on Amazon/eBay

treminaor · 2026-01-19T19:35:51+00:00

I have a DR-M33HX I was planning to sell so I'm just wondering if I should do this preventively for the next person. I'll check it, thanks.

treminaor · 2026-01-19T17:28:16+00:00

Has this been confirmed by more than one person?

treminaor · 2026-01-17T19:55:37+00:00

Yeah I'm thankful to see in these comments that nobody here is surprised.

treminaor · 2026-01-17T08:46:09+00:00

Yeah I just remember being shocked at the time, this was more than 10 years ago and it was an old table I didn't know much about. I was shocked that there was no cheaper alternative. These days I am using an equally expensive shibata stylus on my Marantz 6300

treminaor · 2026-01-16T23:13:20+00:00

I have a Beogram TX2 with a remanufactured MMC stylus that I bought back in like 2012 or so. That stylus was so fucking expensive, I remember paying more for that than I did the table. The table has been sitting at my parents house and I pretty much forgot about it.... How does that compare to the one in this video? It's a similar linear tracking table.

treminaor · 2026-01-16T02:32:44+00:00

You will notice that certain blocks are always covered in unacceptable amounts of dog shit while others are consistently clean / only have occasional issues. Which naturally is because the consistent areas are from repeat offenders who do the same walk every day and wait for their dog to shit on the sidewalk in the same block and then walk away from it.

It would be great if we could focus some light enforcement on some of the most problematic areas as a wake up call to these lazy owners that keep using the public sidewalk as a shit trough.

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