These would appeal to people who want more cost and inconvenience than buying and playing records on a turntable.
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new Revox B77 MKIII tape machine
- Thread starter holdingpants01
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These would appeal to people who want more cost and inconvenience than buying and playing records on a turntable.
I don't think they are used in any studio these days, either.
D
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Where the actual crazy point is that the Studer/Revox folks seem to be dead positive that they can attract enough people to buy such a device.
British Grove Studios (Mark Knopflers place) :
"On top of that, the studio's machine room boasts no fewer than six Studer A800 multitrack recorders, all of which have been completely recapped and rechipped..."
You might be wrong about that.
British Grove Studios, London
Mark Knopfler's British Grove studio complex is one of very few large studios in the world to have been constructed in recent years.
You quote selectively out of a 2013 article . clearly they state it is a mix of vintage and "modern" gear. check the album notes of the vast majority recordings these days and I can't recall a single one that is recorded on tape. but I am sure I may have missed some vintage stalwarts.British Grove Studios (Mark Knopflers place) :
"On top of that, the studio's machine room boasts no fewer than six Studer A800 multitrack recorders, all of which have been completely recapped and rechipped..."
You might be wrong about that.
British Grove Studios, London
Mark Knopfler's British Grove studio complex is one of very few large studios in the world to have been constructed in recent years.www.soundonsound.com
Excuse me, you said "I don't think they are used in any studio these days, either." If it is your belief that British Grove keeps 6 machines in their room for vanity alone, good for you.
Perhaps u can show us they are still in true operation. Check their website. And a lot may have changed in over 10 years, when the article you partially quote was published.
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I fail to understand why you are trying to infer bad faith in my post. I know for a fact that quite a few of the top facilities around the world keep tape around, and it does get used.
What does it matter how often, or who exactly uses it in whatever way in the process?
I said, I believe: "You might be wrong about that"
Might.
Might not.
If that offended you, I am sorry. Be well.
I am not the least upset and I learned from the exchange. I didn't know Dave Stewart had died. And indeed old good tech dies hard.
OP
holdingpants01
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You'd be wrong, I know at least 5 studios in my country where their selling point is properly maintained and used multitrack tape machine, usually it's Studer because it's easiest to maintain. And yes, they are used, not just standing there, usually after the recording they're dumped into DAW and edited further in digital. Sometimes there are just drums tracked through tape, as they shows the biggest change in sound from straight digital.
Well known example is Electrical Audio, it's founder (RIP, died 6 months ago) Steve Albini was known for working only in analogue, up to this year he recorded a few thousands albums, all on tape, the studio operates as usual
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MaxwellsEq
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B77 are nice; like the PR99 a halfway house between the domestic / HiFi products and the professional A80, A800, A812 etc But the price seems way too high to me given the need to set it up regularly and service the mechanisms and even at its best, a professional 96/24 ADC and DAW would perform better.
DSJR
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Abbey Road seemed to have a side room with multi-track reel to reel machines in storage. The vinyl cutting room has an impeccably maintained ATR 102 at least and a constantly tweaked and much loved cutting lathe (PMC Monitoring rather than the B&W N800 'door-stops' used elsewhere in the building 
The thing is, if this new B77 has better heads (hopefully the lower wear doesn't mean inferior performance), this may mean old Studer equivalents can be kept going too. I remember Decca at Belsize Road used their Studer mastering machines basically until the 15kHz alignment tones on each tape couldn't be accommodated and only then were the playback heads re-lapped or replaced.
The thing is, if this new B77 has better heads (hopefully the lower wear doesn't mean inferior performance), this may mean old Studer equivalents can be kept going too. I remember Decca at Belsize Road used their Studer mastering machines basically until the 15kHz alignment tones on each tape couldn't be accommodated and only then were the playback heads re-lapped or replaced.
Ooooh, pretty.
The one bit of vintage gear I really miss - the A77. IRCC, it cost me around $1k new, sold 10 years later for around $500.
Aside from the 'long play' abilities, just the electro-mechanical 'goodness' of it was enough to keep me enthralled with it.
Doing the same, or better, today, should be expensive. Suprised they kept at it, the market for it has to be tiny, or just billionaires.
The one bit of vintage gear I really miss - the A77. IRCC, it cost me around $1k new, sold 10 years later for around $500.
Aside from the 'long play' abilities, just the electro-mechanical 'goodness' of it was enough to keep me enthralled with it.
Doing the same, or better, today, should be expensive. Suprised they kept at it, the market for it has to be tiny, or just billionaires.
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Old timers will remember that in the early '70s, ReVox advertised how their A77 came with a 'lifetime' warranty (sans heads). It sounded good on paper, for the consumer at the time, but no one back then understood that this meant the lifetime of the company, and not the machine.
ReVox was the 'consumer' end of Studer, with a USA service center in Nashville. To keep things in economic perspective, a complete factory refurbishment of your machine (which they would get up to spec) cost almost as much as a new deck. Open reel was never cheap to keep going. And they always needed TLC to keep going.
From a home consumer standpoint, recording quarter track at up to 7ips, ReVox machines were really no better than any upper-end Japanese decks. In home use, open reel was mostly used to copy on-air FM programs, or your friend's LP. In fact, from a tape handling standpoint, the B77 was fairly primitive compared to top of the line Teac and Akai. At least that was my personal experience. Never owning one, but only from the brochures, I always imagined the quartz PLL direct drive Technics machines would have the best W/F and speed stability. Tandberg was another Euro brand that had good consumer appeal. Never owned a Tandberg.
My guess is that almost all machines from that era are now pretty much falling apart. Good luck finding parts.
It was a doomed format for home use, even back in the day. Nothing like unboxing your tapes and finding they had deteriorated to the point of no return.
Before I left the hobby I was able to buy Maxell UD at my local guitar store. Maxell was about it. Prior to Maxell leaving the building you could find TDK, Sony, Scotch, Ampex, BASF and half a dozen others. Quantegy (out of Georgia, I think) acquired Ampex, and sold mail order. Soon they were a memory.
Nothing as cool as an open reel deck in your audio rack. Even if it doesn't work. That much is certain.
Everything sold in the EU has two years warranty as a matter of law. In the UK more like 6 years, though can be more.
Still have one of mine, needs some fixing when I get round to it. B77 no better in sound, but easier for editing - not that either of them good for that. That's where the pro machines come in. I always used Bias decks for that job though, had nice varispeed and raised headblock. I really prefer editing in Wavelab though!
DVDdoug
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I don't see any practical need for it, but...
Converting to U.S. dollars, that's about $17,400 USD. An inflation calculator tells me that's about $2,150 in 1970 dollars (when I might have been interested in a reel-to-reel machine). I don't remember what I paid for my (used) Radio Shack reel-to-reel, but it's value new was probably less than $500. At some point, probably in the 1980s I gave it away. It would "look cool" on the shelf but I've got too much junk anyway. I seem to remember seeing TEAC machines going for around $700. I know Revox was more, but I don't know if they were $2000.
But overall, when you consider the much smaller market and low production volumes, and lack of competition, and that's it's made in Europe, the price doesn't seem THAT unreasonable to me!
Converting to U.S. dollars, that's about $17,400 USD. An inflation calculator tells me that's about $2,150 in 1970 dollars (when I might have been interested in a reel-to-reel machine). I don't remember what I paid for my (used) Radio Shack reel-to-reel, but it's value new was probably less than $500. At some point, probably in the 1980s I gave it away. It would "look cool" on the shelf but I've got too much junk anyway. I seem to remember seeing TEAC machines going for around $700. I know Revox was more, but I don't know if they were $2000.
But overall, when you consider the much smaller market and low production volumes, and lack of competition, and that's it's made in Europe, the price doesn't seem THAT unreasonable to me!
