How to Use a Reel - To - Reel tape machine - How to use the rear panel of a tape machine

On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Kurt Glaser, Chief Engineer at KGB Studios, Seattle. Continuing on our sessions on "How to use a Two Track Reel to Reel Tape Recorder". Today what we're going to be looking at, is we're going to be looking at the back part, looking at the functions and connectors on the back of the tape recorder, and talk a little about grounding the tape recorder which is an important piece. So let's get right into it. Alright, what we have on the back of the reel to reel tape recorder is fairly simple as you can see here. Now, the first thing we'll take a look at, of course, is the power cable. I want to make a comment on the power cable right here. The power cable, as you can see, is only a two prong (I'll put it over in the background here). It's only a two prong connector. That's not a real good plan. That was one of the things that almost closed the deal when I bought this deck back in 1976, is that it only had two. Most reel to reel recorders have a three prong connector. But I did discover that this little section right here on the back, this guy right here, is a grounding pin, and you can ground the entire chassis on the deck with this grounding pin. So that's what I chose, and that's another reason I chose the deck besides the cost on the unit, of course, which was very competitive at the time. Now, the next piece here is we have these five pin what they call "DIN", this is for the front two channels, this is for the back two channels on this four, and two of the pins are for record, and two of the pins are for playback as you might be able to see in the illustration. It's called a "DIN" connector. It's almost reminiscent of what became the midi connector later on. Alright, let's move over to the left. Up on the top here we have Mr. Fuse where you can twist and take the fuse out. I'll do that right here so you can see it. The fuse is one of these typical type fuses. You can check with an ohm meter to make sure it's working. Obviously if the desk doesn't work right off the bat, that would be your first piece to troubleshoot to find out if it's working. And then of course down here we have what they call unbalanced RCA type of connectors for the output here on these four, front two, back two here. And then over on here we have the input. This is where if you want to run from a mixer or from some other input source like a guitar or a synthesizer, you can go "RCA Out" on that device, coming into the "RCA In" here for the front or for the rear. Interestingly you can record one track at a time on a four track reel to reel, or you can record two, three or four tracks. These are, of course, unbalanced, and I'll show you what the types of connectors I recommend using which are brass types of RCA.