Old Akia and Roberts tube reel to reels.

  • Thread starter Thread starter j.harv
  • Start date Start date
Well.I went and bought them for the hell of it.(I was bored).
Their nice looking decks.Pretty clean too.
The Akai is worse than the Roberts as the pinch roller is in bad shape and I cant get any audio out of it.It does fire up and the tubes do light up though.
The Roberts works somewhat.The reels spin but the audio is very faint.Sounds like some old country music on the reels that came with it.
The one thing Im happy about is,the Roberts is a kick ass sounding tube guitar amp!!!
I plugged the guitar in and bam!!!! Really nice dirty sounding tube distortion.And its pretty loud too.
So at least I can get some use from it.Now to try and get the Akai going for guitar too.
Here are some pics


388 069.webp388 070.webp388 072.webp
 
j.harv said:
I came across this ad for 2 nice tube reel to reel for sale,Cheap!!! $20 each.
Click to expand...


Sounds like a decent score at $20.00 a unit.
If anything...you don't plan on restoring them,..you can always part 'em out and definitely get double, or most likely 4-5 times the amount you paid for 'em just in the parts alone.
Believe it or not, tube reels seem to be in demand as of lately.
Good score!
 
Thanks for posting the link.
There is a guy who posted a lot on another forum and also eBay
Who fixes these up for a fee.
From what I read, he has taken money from folks who have not gotten their units,
So watch out for that.
I've got one sitting around here. Going to dig it out today and take a look.
 
I dug mine up, but was a 977 which is a solid state version, I believe.
Do the tube versions actually sound any good?
 
I did get a reel of tape and a take up reel with each.The Roberts,which is basically the same as the Akai,sounds nice.The one reel of tape I got with it has Christmas carols on it and actually sounds really good.But like I said earlier,these things sound great when you plug a guitar into them.Both of them work great in that way.I think Im going to try and mod at least one of them into a preamp,as I have read lots of good things bout them.I would also ike to try and turn one of the amps into a guitar amp head like this.....


NAD: 60's Akai M7 tube head - EL84-based goodness - The Gear Page
 
It's none of my business, but I have to confess that I've never liked the idea of scrapping a perfectly good R2R just to make something you could buy off the shelf. It's not like it was a 4000 that was produced by the million, after all :-/
 
I know what you mean about hacking these old decks up.
You end up with a landfill carcass.
On the other hand, these things are worth almost nothing as decks.
They sell used for what, $25?
And if they need work, the bill from a repair tech could be hundreds of dollars.
This forum aside, I don't see a huge demand for old consumer decks going forward.
Tape itself is not even a sure thing.
So at least someone is getting some use out of them.
 
jpmorris said:
It's none of my business, but I have to confess that I've never liked the idea of scrapping a perfectly good R2R just to make something you could buy off the shelf. It's not like it was a 4000 that was produced by the million, after all :-/
Click to expand...

Yeah.I hear ya.
The thing is with these decks is that I really have no use for them as in playing/recording music.I might keep one of them intact because I can still plug a guitar into it,mic it up and get some cool tones from it.But the Akais' reel dont spin so I might hack that one up.
But I know what your saying.As I was playing the tape on the Roberts,it was just kinda a cool experience having that music playing through an old deck,spinning reels,lit up tubes and all that.
 
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