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In Reply to: RE: Shit happens posted by Victor Khomenko on May 16, 2023 at 07:04:18
... came to a dramatic end with exploding caps (my tech calls them firecracker caps) and a brief but scary blaze (put itself out, fortunately) after which I sold it for parts.
Follow Ups:
Yes, you related that story to us several years ago.
On the other hand, I've had my A77 Mk IV since 78/79, with no issues. Sorry for your unfortunate experience.
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
...then you should also look for and eradicate the Frako capacitors, if they are there in your unit. They used to be omnipresent in Studer/Revox products, and are very, very troublesome.Truth is - even if your unit appears to work just fine, it might not be running up to its full specs, due to many of those caps losing their characteristics.
It is not uncommon to measure a 100uF capacitor and only see 6uF, or its ERS go very high. So the circuit might look fine to a naked eye, but its performance not where it should be.
There was a guy at HP where I worked, who owned a Honda with 110,000 miles on it, when he was suddenly told about oil changes... he had never done it before.
And yes, the car still kinda ran.
Edits: 05/18/23
Victor, I bought the Revox (Mark IV, Dolby) to replace a Teac A2300SD (Dolby). I really wanted to like it, especially for Dolby tapes. My Revox really looked splendid and was packaged for shipment so well that I had high hopes for it.
Didn't take long, though, to find a few flaws other than the caps and fire.
* Its Dolby functionality was way inferior to that of the Teac.
* The RCA jacks were so close together that none of my better ICs would work with it.
* The pinch roller was so hidden away it was a real pain to keep clean.
* The sound quality of my attempted dubs was not even close to that of my main deck, an Otari MX5050. The other stuff could have been forgiven save for this SQ issue.
Granted, it should have gone to my tech first thing, and I'm at fault there. But the heads looked beautiful and it was a really stunning looking deck.
I presume you are talking about the A77 - it was a very early design, but its strong points are not going to be obvious to an average user. Once you remove the cover you see its pro product roots, with many upscale things there - it was the design philosophy from top down, from pro to consumer level. But it is a compact machine, so some usability issues are there, like hard access to heads and the roller. They eventually refined that basic topology in PR-99.
I don't like Dolby, don't use it, it has no place in high end.
I am not really a Studer/Revox aficionado, even though I own four of each, but I respect the company for its overall contribution and it has done some great things.
... it was where the tape action was, for quite a while, and I have more than 100 Dolby tapes and I got sucked in. Too bad, even the Nak Dolby decoder (NR-200, which I owned for a while), was a mistake
As to the A77 being too elderly for words, you'd think that by the time they reached Mark IV status, they'd have fixed some of the more obvious flaws. I had lotsa Teacs of the same vintages that didn't have the Revox mystique (I bought one because of it) but didn't have its flaws either.
Don't know why I'm still so pissed off about these things :-)
Company's first entry into the consumer market... if you discard the very nice all-tube G36. Revox' serious line begins with B77, a far more mature product. The 2-track model with 15ips is pretty good.
And it is gorgeous inside. Cast alloy chassis with nice card cage, VERY easy to work on.
The professional Studers are very nice mechanical machines with not so nice sound, but they are big statement machines. I have four of them, which I almost never use, but I love them. :)
nt
Here the eyes tell you the full story of very high grade engineering.On top of that its audio circuits are discrete... no Japanese op-amps there. :)
Edits: 05/19/23
:)
Thanks.
That's all I need - another project.
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
Unless you have more. :)
And imagine the maintenance you would need on a 50yo car. Decks are such pussycats by comparison. :)
Some electronic components take 50-60 years of service in stride, but for others it is too much, and almost no brand is immune. Capacitors are always number one suspect.
That is why many people, buying such machines, either take them to a technician for recapping, or do it themselves.
I recently had a minor smoke from my Ampex ATR-800 - a small electrolytic cap shorted, burning a filter choke in process. Minor repair. The audio boards on that machine have been recapped earlier, but it is hard to catch every such part.
Overall the reliability of many good machines is remarkable.
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