This was given to me by a friend who's mom was getting a divorce- it was his step-dad's and he'd left it behind when he moved out. It was a big step up from the portable cassette players I had been using for recording.
That chunk of gold metal stuck on the top bottom right is called a tape block, and you use it to cut the recording tape more or less precisely when you want to splice it together. It takes some practice to learn to use it.
That was how I made my beats. I'd have a big old loop of tape strung around mic stands placed around the room, and this beast was strong enough to pull it. Actual looping.
The video link is about a recording I made with the band Big Red using this machine. Good times doing it ourselves.
Oh, and that step-dad? He was a New York district attorney. She got the rent-controlled apartment. Life is strange .
there's special splicing tape to do it- you can't use regular tape because it's too gummy. So you cut the recording tape with a razor knife after marking it at the spot that you want to loop from. The tape block holds it flat, it's really hard to cut cleanly without it. And you can't use scissors, they are usually somewhat magnetized, and that will erase the tape!
Then you find the end of the loop, mark it, and cut it to mate with the beginning. This is also a little tricky because you want to make your cut at an angle so that it runs past the tape head smoothly, and you can't cut both ends the same- you have to turn one end over to make it match up. Then you align the ends (without forming a twist) and tape them together on the back side of the tape (one side has the oxide on it, the other is support) and then trim the splicing tape along the edges so that nothing will catch in the machine.