Revox b77

[Xavier W.T.]

Hi,

I am presently recording a demo with acoustic guitars, electric guitars, voices, harmonica, slide, piano, etc and it's all digital. I hate the way it sounds and to pretend it's not me who suck I thought of buying analog recording equipment.

I found a revox b77 for approx $330
it is a good price?
it's 2 band, right?
so what can it do, what can't it do?
what other equipment will I need to use it properly?

thank you!

[jpmorris]

Originally Posted by Xavier W.T.

Hi,
I found a revox b77 for approx $330
it is a good price?
it's 2 band, right?
so what can it do, what can't it do?
what other equipment will I need to use it properly?
thank you!

Do you know if it's a high speed or low speed model? The low speed one has 3.75 and 7.5 ips speeds, the high-speed model does 7.5 and 15ips. Ideally you really want the high speed version, although the consumer model is still well-regarded.

Unless I'm much mistaken, these machines are always stereo. There might be a full-track mono version as well, but I've never heard of it. There are however, both 2-track and 4-track versions. You want the 2-track version. The 4-track version is still stereo, but you can flip the tapes over like a cassette and record on the other side as well. The 2-track version uses the full tape width instead of half of it and thus the recording quality is higher. Generally if you get a high-speed model it will be 2-track - if not you've got something pretty rare.

As for what it can do, it has the ability to record both tracks independently, so you could if you wanted to record a click track on the left and then vocals on the right afterwards. I've only done that once though - usually I use mine for mixing down onto. It can also be used to do tape echo without any additional equipment. The settings for this are described in the manual.

As for other equipment you'd need, it depends what you're trying to do.
Basically it takes two RCA inputs, and has two RCA outputs. Unless I'm using it for some weird purposes like echo or tape loops, I generally feed mine from the mixing desk (or soundcard if I'm archiving digital material) and take the output from the deck back into the soundcard. There is also a headphone socket on front of the machine which you can use for monitoring.
These machines do not usually have an internal speaker, although I think this was an option.
My biggest annoyance with mine is the mechanical counter.

**EDIT**
The 2/4 track thing should be clearer now

[Xavier W.T.]

thank you!