Well, now, looky here what Jonny’s got!
Yup. The very item I (and a lot of other folks) called the best source component at RMAF (and would’ve named the best source component at CES, if we’d given an award for best source component at CES)–United Home Audio’s cherry-red UHA-HQ Tascam 15 ips, two-track, analog tape deck–is now sitting right next to the best source component I’ve (yet) heard in my system, the Walker Proscenium Black Diamond Mk II record player.
It’s been a long, long, long time since TAS reviewed a reel-to-reel tape deck, and I’m not sure we’ve ever reviewed 15 ips, two-track, first-generation dubs of gen-u-ine mastertapes. But thanks to Greg Beron of United Home Audio, Carl Marchisotta of Nola Speakers, and Paul Stubblebine of The Tape Project that is about to change.
You can read about UHA’s fabulous tape machines at www.unitedhomeproducts.com/reel_to_reel_hq_tape_decks.htm. (The one I’ve got is a “Level 5” deck, I think.) And you can read all about The Tape Project’s fabulous catalog of 15 ips. two-track, reel-to-reel first-generation dubs of mastertapes–which includes little numbers like Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, Thelonius Monk’s Brilliant Corners, Linda Rondstadt’s Heart Like a Wheel, The Band’s Stage Fright, David Oistrakh (with Horenstein and the LSO) performing the Hindemith Violin Concerto, and Reference Recordings’ Nojima Plays Lizst, among other heavyweights–at www.tapeproject.com/catalog/catalog.htm.
It’s almost too much for a poor boy to handle!
Greg will be arriving this Friday to give me a refresher course on tape recorders and tape recordings. Several of The Tape Project tapes should arrive on Thursday, with more slated for the coming months. As soon as I can I will post a picture of the Tascam lit up and in action. And as soon as I am able I’ll begin to blog in detail about the Tascam, how to use it, and how it sounds. Until then, I’ll just be sitting in front of it, drooling.
We all like talking about the sound of mastertapes–and guessing about how closer our systems take us via records and CDs and SACDs to their sound. Now, finally, after forty years of guessing, I will be in a position to actually tell you (and tell myself) if Turntable A or CD Player B is, indeed, coming closer to the sound of the mastertape! What an extraordinary treat! 
By Jonathan Valin
I’ve been a creative writer for most of life. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I wrote eleven novels and many stories—some of which were nominated for (and won) prizes, one of which was made into a not-very-good movie by Paramount, and all of which are still available hardbound and via download on Amazon. At the same time I taught creative writing at a couple of universities and worked brief stints in Hollywood. It looked as if teaching and writing more novels, stories, reviews, and scripts was going to be my life. Then HP called me up out of the blue, and everything changed. I’ve told this story several times, but it’s worth repeating because the second half of my life hinged on it. I’d been an audiophile since I was in my mid-teens, and did all the things a young audiophile did back then, buying what I could afford (mainly on the used market), hanging with audiophile friends almost exclusively, and poring over J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile and Harry Pearson’s Absolute Sound. Come the early 90s, I took a year and a half off from writing my next novel and, music lover that I was, researched and wrote a book (now out of print) about my favorite classical records on the RCA label. Somehow Harry found out about that book (The RCA Bible), got my phone number (which was unlisted, so to this day I don’t know how he unearthed it), and called. Since I’d been reading him since I was a kid, I was shocked. “I feel like I’m talking to God,” I told him. “No,” said he, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “God is talking to you.” I laughed, of course. But in a way it worked out to be true, since from almost that moment forward I’ve devoted my life to writing about audio and music—first for Harry at TAS, then for Fi (the magazine I founded alongside Wayne Garcia), and in the new millennium at TAS again, when HP hired me back after Fi folded. It’s been an odd and, for the most part, serendipitous career, in which things have simply come my way, like Harry’s phone call, without me planning for them. For better and worse I’ve just gone with them on instinct and my talent to spin words, which is as close to being musical as I come.
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