What amazing first-hand and in-depth info!!! Many thanks for sharing this, I'm sure many people here will have benefited from it. For me to mod my A700 would only ever be a dream i think; I dont have the knowledge/skill level. But at least i can refer back to this if i'm suddenly overcome with a wave of bravery.

I look forward to hearing "Cantate Domino" too. (away from my laptop!)

It would appear that it was all your mods, custom preamp, etc etc in addition to the standard performance of the A77 which made the recording the benchmark in quality which it is reputed to be.

Many thanks once again.

Hi, thanks for your interest in my ancient recording epoch...
A few moments ago I edited my previous post and uploaded a new version of the end of "Cantate Domino" (a little bit longer and probably with a little bit better mp3-conversion). Just click on the same link in my previous post.

And as a contrast, here you can listen to a short sample from the same record but much quieter and more delicate music (you can hear the Stockholm traffic in the background). It's from track 8 and the name of the song is "Il est né le divin enfant".

Cantate Domino, track 8, the beginning.mp3

Best regards,
Bertil

great recording man!

you agree with me, that it would take too much "time" for a non-technical guy who just wants to record to "optimize" an revox a-7x machine to better standards..

Back in the '70s a brand new A-77 plus a week of a technician's time cost far less than any "pro" 1/4" machine and produced better sounding results than most. I took my machine into studios for making copies and compared it against Ampexes, Studers, MCIs and Otaris many times. Only the Ampex ATR-100 made quieter recordings but the Revox still played them back better.

Everything else was a step down and unfortunately later Revoxes and low-end Studers were a step further. That said, I remain nostalgic for our Studer C-37s at Motown.

Thanks for all the a77 info guys.. Given my options and what i'm looking for in a mixdown deck ('70s rock and roll vibe, and lots of mojo vs pro modern sound), I'm sold on the 15 ips a77. I'm near purchasing one, and I'll be doing the input direct to the pots mod.. I like the fact this thing can playback in iec, as my mrl is iec..

if anyone has the mods to do the record card iec mod and the noise floor mods, please let me know.

I'll keep this thread updated when i get my deck in and what i do to it. Thanks!

Nick

The 7.5/3.75 version had two 7.5 playback eq. choices but the NAB high speed version only had NAB in both play positions.

Ahh ok. Thanks for the heads up!

No.

Really why the fk would you buy a **** 2 track tape machine?
Is it because you want to add a bit of "tape vibe" to your recordings?

Just Dont Do It!

OK, you ignored my advice and bought it anyway.

Now you have a consumer tape machine. What are you going to do with it?

Bouncing a few tracks sounds cool as ****!
AWESOME!! I'm happy you have found the joy of tape.

OK, now let's mix the track then......

The tape doesn't actually sync with the PT session.

Doesn't matter I will just Beat Detective it. .

Well I know why i wanna buy a "sh-t" 2 track machine, cause yes i like the sound of older gear - depending on what people say about it, and no i dont use pro tools, ive never used pro tools once, and i never bothered with beat detective either. Real musicians can actually play and don't need any of that. Real drummers can play with feel, and real bands can play in a room and get a good take without anyone messing up - believe it or not in 2011 its possible!!

I've mixed bands to 2 track tape live from the board in the studio and to my ears have made more compelling music than most people have with digital rigs. I've used atr 102's, I've used otari mx5050's, now I wanna try something different.

That's why.

Fair enough!

Sorry for my rant, it was late, long day blah blah. You know the story.

Just tired of people looking to use a tape machine as a plug-in, which you aren't.

I know at least 10 people that have bought tape machines over the years just to add that "something extra", and all they do now is sit there collecting dust. (the tape machines, not the people).

The recordings I've done like this sound amazing, it makes sense, as little processing as possible.

Trying to convince a good band to record like this is hard though, despite the obvious advantages of audio quality.

Anyway I have a 30ips B67 and it sounds fantastic, better than my A807.

alignment is critical, of course, but not too hard to learn.

I totally agree about using tape as an effect, for me it is simply the best quality recording medium I have..... maybe when I can eventually afford some better convertors I will feel differently.

Apologies accepted. I can totally understand. I'm an engineer gone audiophile, then i reinvented how i engineer... i started hearing everything differently.. Never went to school for this. I grew up on the cusp of the digital age. I got into it like everyone. Then one day I went back, got an audiophile quality TT setup, pulled out my favorite albums from childhood - Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Zep, Judas Priest, and i realized i forgot what everyone forgot - how much better things sounded before digital - before the loudness wars - before "ultramaximizers".. And now my studio is a mix of pro studio and audiophile gear.

Bit of a mad scientist workspace in the making.

I still use some digital. I developed my own AD conversion technique too. I kept playing with it until at 44/16 the hairs on my arm still stood up like they did when i listened to the vinyl. Now, they didn't stand up as much as they did when I listened to the vinyl, but if they stood up at all, I knew I had a method to keep.

With that said, thats why I want the revox.

Nick

quick update, i got the revox a77 in today. got a deal on ebay for a high speed mk3 dolby version. not a fan of dolby and in my initial tests i wasn't surprised with the dolby's ability to kill the vibe, so i think i'll leave it off for now. the unit was in great shape. came with the remote (which isn't working right - it's not killing the stop function like the plug for the remote port does). i just decided to leave that out for now. i just have a little piece of wire jumping pins 1 and 2 at the moment.

i was a little (ok.. a LOT) disappointed to see stickers over the speed control, but perhaps this one was converted correctly, as many of them weren't and i was trying to avoid a conversion machine at all costs. i haven't noticed any dropouts or loss/enhancement of frequency ranges. perhaps it is correctly aligned on the tape path? anyone know if revox themselves did any of these sticker conversions?

using sm911 tape (have a batch of 468 coming in this week and excited to try that.)

initial impressions: solid as a rock. i am running -10db from my board directly to the aux inputs. i am going to probably do that mod that bypasses the pre on it. it looks like that may already have been done. the aux lines seem to run right to the boards that are connected to the l/r input pots. i still have the input on the recorder extremely low, and i get clipping if i push too hard past 0. but my board and the machine are both aligned at 0, so keeping the board out of the red keeps any clipping on the machine from happening. happy camper there so far.

a little hiss on quiet spots, but i do rock, so i dont really mind.

15 ips - lots of bite and punch yet creamy as well. i definitely like it better than the otari i was using ( a b2hd). has lots of character, which is what i wanted.

7 1/2 - i might prefer the 7 1/2 on some things. it really has that 70's sound. sounds like a kiss or thin lizzy album on this speed. no noticable frequency differences - still lots of highs, tho 10k isn't as "steady" here as it is on the 15, which is a given. there might be a tad more hiss on this speed as well.

overall it really puts a mix together in a way i really like so far. it's comfortable for me. and there's different flavors to achieve using the different speeds which is very cool as well.

nick

They never sold Dolby on 7.5/15 machines so it would have had to have been converted.

Cool Bob thanks for the info.

Regardless, I love this machine.

I just had some time to play around with my a77 last night and figured out the line input bypass mod, and since it doesn't seem to be publicly posted anywhere, I wanted to share it for any other a77 owners.

It's REALLY simple. And the end result is you're not even using those input amplifiers built into the a77 anymore! So more pure sound and no more clicking when you hit "0" on the tape, saturation is possible AND awesome on this machine!

On the back of the input level pots there's 4 pins each. a black wire goes to pins 1 and 4, pins 2 and 3 are red and orange (i forget which is which off the top of my head - doesnt matter). Solder the ground wire to either 1 or 4, and the hot lead to the same pin as the red wire (nothing needs to be disconnected from the pots - as a matter of fact everything should stay in case you do want to still use the regular inputs for any reason)

Now, with my board setup, the input was HOT! I was hitting 0 at almost no gain on the controls even with a -10db unbalanced output, and I did have a load happening on the board - lost most of my signal going to my master fader - my VUs dropped from 0 to around -20. A 10k resistor in line with the hot lead on each channel brought it back. I'm reading "0" on the VUs at around the 3 on the inputs of the tape machine now. At max gain the needle drops back a little on mine (almost looks what happens when you do bias adjustment). I don't think there's ever a situation when you would even begin to hit that threshold so it doesn't matter to me. Maybe a 22k would be a little more accurate, but no worries, i'm happy.

This machine can achieve BEAUTIFUL saturation - i just tested with 468 tape. Wow. I'm stunned how buttery and rich it is. Bypass those mic/line inputs pronto! You don't know what you're missing if you don't!

Nick

Many thanks for this info..... still above my head though! - Non-technical type here.

Would this work on an A700 too?

Now you know how my A77 beat out ATR-100s in every respect but hiss level! The later models are much more complicated and I've never heard of a mod that improved them much. The A-77 was kind of a fluke.

I don't know the a700 at all, Bob Olhsson would know if anyone did. He's helped me out so much in this thread.

However, if it's the same scenario with the input amps and how they work in the chain, then yes I assume it would make a huge difference on that machine too. Check the input pots and see if it's a similar pinout. If I owned an a700 and the pots looked setup like that, I'd give it a shot at least.

Yeah Bob, you're the reason I got this thing in the first place. I researched and researched and it all came back to what you said about the a77. And as far as hiss goes, I like hiss - I do loud 70's rock That glue and saturation have tons of character for what I work with in my studio Thanks again

Nick

I just removed the back from the A700, sat looking at it for about 5 mins, All the pots are concealed behind the transport chassis. I just can't bring myself to mess with it. :¬(

I'm happy that you've successfully moded your A77 though! . . . Enjoy!

I have conversed with Bob before... i think his verdict was that his moded A77 sounded better than an unmoded A700. But he didnt have any details regarding the 'Abbey Road' Mod.

Great stuff. Quick question, how does the mod affect procedure when doing an alignment?

hellooo
i wish i could buy a B67 but,these machines in a good shape cost here in Europe around 1000 euros or even more...so my second and cheaper choice is what else?The REVOX PR99(7 1/2 & 15 IPS)....so my main question is :
How does it sound compared to the B67?Thinner and cleaner with more crispy sound?
Last question:PR99 MKIII doesn't have mic inputs on the front and sync playback as well.Is this an issue for live home recording?What does sync playback do?
thank you

revox is prosumer.. stay away from it in a studio environement. you are better off buying one of those tape-plugins (they do not sound like tape, but you are closer to what you want, then with a cheap revox).

sync playback and all the rest:
Tape Recorder Alignment

read it.

There is a b67 I am selling for a friend. 700 euros. Works. Pickup in switzerland.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk

Revox basically is a consumer grade machine, some were tarted up and modified and sold to broadcasters but they don't take well to continued hard usage.
Studer is the professional brand and is designed for daily hard use.

Granted, I would much rather have a pristine Studer machine than a Revox model, but over the years I've seen many A77 machines in use day and day out in radio stations and production facilities. They are built probably better than most other Pro consumer equipment of their time period. I still have both of my A77 machines after 25 years of use and they're still going strong with just simple routine maintenance, pinch rollers, counter belts and heads.

Dennis

I live in Greece...So picking up is a problem for me...even to arrange a courier from here is also difficult...but as far as i know from my experience on ebay.de, DHL delivers big and heavy packages with no more than 40-45 euros ...the price 700 e seems good to me ...but is this in a good condition?....Recapping...heads...calibration....?When was the last time that had a service?Some close photos also could help...(i already found a guy from Switzerland ...he has the A67 with VU meters but he says that i will have to arrange a courier)....and the word ''works'' scares me a little bit...i hope you understand me....
thanks George

yes...a Studer would be more than fine for me....as a newbie i know that i should start with a Revox A77 or B77,but i feel that i have to look higher...i am not in a situation that i could buy and keep several reel to reel recorders...i will buy just one...learn on this ...and stay with this...I have already digital tube preamps,compressors e.t.c so the analog recording has to be in the same comparable level....

this recording is a ''piece of art''...thank you