Ampex MM1100 Variable Speed

[dawsonaudio]

I've been investigating hooking up a variable speed function to my Ampex MM1100/16 track.

Mainly, I'd like to throttle the speed down a little lower than 15ips. 7ips had a little too much high frequency roll off so I'm looking for something in between.

Would it be possible to send a signal from one of my DAW ouputs into the Ampex Variable Speed plug on the back of my machine. It looks like there is a dummy plug connected. 9600 hz is the frequency that the deck is currently using. I read in the Ampex manual that connecting to pin 2 (hot) and pin 3 (common) of the Variable Speed socket, I could add vso.

I'd create a track in my daw, insert a signal generator and feed that to the ampex deck. I'd wire pin 2 and pin 3 of the xlr out from my daw accordingly and float the ground lug at the input of the deck/variable speed socket. Would this work?

Thanks for any advice here.

Nate

 

[radardoug]

The signal on the input is single ended and relative to ground. You need a good level signal.
I would suggest a function generator would be better, as it is square wave out , and made for the job.

 

[dawsonaudio]

I'll try that out instead. Thanks for the advice.

Any recommendations on a entry level function generator? I've only ever used my DAW to generate tones for tape alignment, testing, etc...

 

[dawsonaudio]

I was able to get a good signal into the tape machine varispeed ref/in and adjust the tape speed via the DAW frequency generator, but the tape machine has a little flutter/ wobble to it like the tone generator isn't as precise and clean as the onboard reference 9600hz.

Any recommendations for a sub $200 dollar stand alone function generator that would work better than the output of my DAW?

Thanks,
Nate

 

[pucho812]

any reason why you want to varispeed?

 

[dawsonaudio]

I've been wanting to try out the 'in-between' speeds for a while now to see what the tape machine would sound like at say 22 1/2 IPS or at some arbitrary number like 12 IPS.

I don't have noise reduction for my deck so part of the reason I'd like to try speeds higher than 15 IPS would be to see if I can get a little less tape noise without going to 30 IPS which I don't really care for with the music I'm recording. Of course I can adjust eq to tape, but wanted to give the speed variation a try.

 

[gyraf]

..somebody should make a noise reduction system in-the-box-plugin for interfacing to tapes. Like dolbySR

(XR2206 is a decent function generator IC: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006160600480.html )

 

[radardoug]

You already have the possibility to do the standard speeds. Tip, you can get more than two speeds out of an 1100.
And going in between would not be that different. It is already clear that your machine possibly has worn heads, since at 7 1/2 its not flat.
So is it really worth the effort? Of course you could use the varispeed for all sorts of musical experiments.