Akai 1710w

Zach Whittaker

New member
Hey, I just picked up an AKAI 1710W at a yard sale yesterday, and I was curious if anyone here knew anything about it. Really what I would like to know is if you can record multiple tracks. I picked it up because it says that it is a four track stereophonic, but once I messed around with it, I'm not even sure that I can record two tracks on it. I've tested it, and I can definitely record one track on it no problem, but if I attempt to record another track I can't hear the previous track in order to overlay the next track. Any help about this machine would be very much appreciated. Thanks
 
Like many other decks, it operates on the same basis as a cassette.

You can record two channels at once and you can listen to two channels at once, but this arrangement only uses two quarters of the tape.

The other two quarters are accessible by turning the tape over.
Chances are your machine has two track heads that are spaced like 1+3 would be on a four track head.


Anyway, you have left and right inputs, and left and right gain knobs. Those are your two channels.

I guess to record to left, you set the switch to 1-4 (which means track 1-sideA, or track 4-sideB) then record.

Flicking the switch over to 2-3 should then let you hear your previous recording, whilst laying down a second one.
You'd need to check to confirm that though.
 
I have a 1710W and can confirm it is a two-channel machine with quarter-track spacing as described in the prior post. In other words, you can record up to two separate tracks at a time, not four. Like many consumer units of that era, it only has two heads -- an erase head and a combined record/playback head -- so you also cannot listen to a track and record on the same track at the same time. I have not tried the proposal above about playing back one track while recording on the other, but I think that can be done. I can try it later if you like and I get time.

With the right tape it is not a bad sounding unit. By "right tape" I mean stuff that is low bias, as there is no bias or EQ adjustments on this machine to adjust for different tape. The 1710W is a hybrid of a transistor preamp and tube output, and if you use the "line out" you still get one tube stage in the signal path. If you use the "headphone out" you get the full tube path on playback and record-monitoring. I tracked down the elusive Akai 15 i.p.s. kit for mine and have found that at 15 i.p.s. with older low-bias tapes you can get a pretty flat frequency response with pink noise measurements. The signal-to-noise ratio, wow and flutter, and other specs are certainly dated though, and with limitations like two heads, a belt drive, single capstan/reels motor, no bias/EQ adjustments, etc. you are not going to compete with the specs produced by Studers, Otaris, etc.
 
Back
Top