Scooped a Revox A-77

snipeguy

snipeguy

Andy Goldsworthy Wannabe
A pal in Toronto gave me a Revox A-77 to use as a mix down deck. Anyone know anything about these machines? I seem to remember good things.
Oh Great Purveyors of Analog, humble me with you collective wisdom!
 
snipeguy said:
A pal in Toronto gave me a Revox A-77 to use as a mix down deck. Anyone know anything about these machines? I seem to remember good things.
Oh Great Purveyors of Analog, humble me with you collective wisdom!
Click to expand...


".....Studer & Revox
The Willi Studer company in Switzerland began to manufacture tape recorders in the late 1940's under the Dynavox trademark, in the early 50's the line was split up and the professional models were thereafter called Studer and the consumer models were named Revox but the lines retained a certain commonitaly of parts (and sometimes models, some models were Revox if low speed and Studer if high speed, also after the split of studer/revox all open reel recorders were named Studer)...."

The Revox was Studer's consumer line of recorders. Nice machines that last and last. They are great for mixdown and should do a great job for you assuming the heads are good and the thing is aligned right.

Good Luck.
 
The A77 was used by a number of smaller budget professional studios back in the 80's. I know this from my old back issues of Mix magazine which had the studio directory pages at the back of almost every issue.

I also remember seeing a ton of them in repair and pawn shops back in the day because they were indeed a consumer machine that saw some versions going no faster the 7.5 ips and the heavier use that many studios gave them sent many of them in for assorted mechanical failure repairs.

Assuming you got a gently used one, there's no reason not to expect excellent results from it! ;)

Cheers! :)
 
On cursory inspection, everything seems tickety-boo. The heads are in good shape, showing a little wear. The wear is very even and doesn't concern me. All mechanics work fine .............except for one teeny little thing. The left hand takeup reel assembly makes this rizzy sound, like a bad plastic bushing or something, when in FF or REW. It's fine in PLAY. If you have any ideas, let me know. Again, I'm not overly worried but I will check it out when I go in deep. It's kinda low on the maintainance list right now.

BTW Anyone know what the NAB, INPUT, IEC switch does?
 
snipeguy said:
BTW Anyone know what the NAB, INPUT, IEC switch does?
Click to expand...
I suspect it is for different recording bias settings. NAB, perhaps a 320Nwb setting and the IEC, a 250 or 180 setting?

It sounds like the minor mechanical issues you described were pretty typical for the machine from what I have seen in the past from my tech buddies of yesteryear.

Does your deck run at 15 ips?

Cheers! :)
 
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