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new Revox B77 MKIII tape machine

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.
Well put.

Mine required complete replacement of all trim pots for hundreds of dollars...in the late 70s or early 80s IIRC.
Due to nicotine (I was a smoker back then), I was told, somewhat (hell, nastily so) by the 'smoker hating' repair tech.

I miss that 'certainty of action' the noise of those things represented - if perhaps falsely.

And yes, exactly; I mostly used it for recording a (then) great 24hr jazz station in Philly WRTI (This was more than 50 years ago!), which included live broadcasts of such local artists as Rufus Harley, and Sun Ra, among others.


They ran a full hour, followed by a few minutes of track identifications and commentary, so it was easy to load up a full tape to record and play back continuously, and could 'dub' the commentary track to the other side (delayed, at lower volume). Made for some fantastic long play tapes.
I found the Ampex tapes to deteriorate the fastest, and stopped buying new tapes well before I sold it. Sadly the kid I sold it to had ZERO interest in the hundreds of hours of jazz on the tapes that went with it, so no doubt were erased for whatever crud he was using it to record :)

I also used to record LP selections in a kind of 'long play' playlist.

I also loved the wired remote, with lovely clicky relays it activated.

I purchased several of the neat tight fittting plexiglass dustcovers, even though they didn't fit with tapes on...but they were cheap ($25?) and ended up shaving them down to use as very thin profile pencil drawers for my desks - and still use them for that to this day, complete with Revox logo on the (now) bottom of them!

Must be some kind of market for gazillionaires mooning over the lost past, I suppose.
 
My dad has a Revox B77 mkII that he purchased new back in the days. It has had low usage.
Although it was still working after 40+ years, rewind was slow to start, and I recapped it. It was needed, the motors cap were leaking, the frako were out of spec.
Once I dd that I purchased an Album unfortunately @ 7 1/2 I/s (most of consumer versions were at that top speed).
The sound is very good and very enjoyable. Better than the same tracks in digital version with the DAC my dad owns.
 
Perhaps you should seek out 12 bit DACs? Because that's what a ReVoX A or B 77 can achieve at 15 ips - 72 dB dynamic range (unless you use Dolby or DBX). Less than that at 7 1/2. In audio it seems to me there is always a tendency, if not self-corrected, to conflate "what I like to/am used to hear" with "what is actually accurate"... that's why we measure stuff. And yes, I have owned G36, 736, B77, A77 and Studer A700s as well as other better machines. I kept the A77/IV to recover old tapes to digital.

I have a lot of old 15 ips tapes from the late 70s where I transcribed amongst others, Rufus to tape using the 736 for archiving (as LPs didn't last long before the ticks start - transcribed with Garrard 410/SME 3012/Ortofon eliptical as I recall, that didn't help much). I can barely bear to listen to the tapes, there's so much added harmonic material. Obviously, your mileage does vary. The A and B 77 are much cleaner, but still very limited.
 
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Revox is releasing a new tape machine Revox B77 MKIII. I never understood the appeal of tape machine outside of the studio, what was the purpose of it? To record FM radio auditions? Basic piracy? Anyway, the price is 15,950.00€ (not a typo), tape not included, but you can buy some music on tape from their music shop: https://w15h.revox.com/en/music-shop/
The bad news is albums START at 339€. The slightly better news and a really cool thing is they are selling fully refurbished and calibrated MKI and MKII models for around half the price of MKIII.
Revox an buyers get now (again) acuinted with Wow & Flutter but now for 16.000 euro :facepalm: . Something you really wanted to avoid as much as possible in the 70ties an 80ties which i did buying a 3 head Nakamichi BX300 at the time. Recording digital was a dream come true. What are they thinking at Revox €$?
 
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How much media has actually been released on R2R tape?

I think it looks cool, but I after spending that much coin, how much music would I actually be able to listen to with it?
 
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Once I dd that I purchased an Album unfortunately @ 7 1/2 I/s (most of consumer versions were at that top speed).
The sound is very good and very enjoyable. Better than the same tracks in digital version with the DAC my dad owns.
You need to include the phrase "in my opinion", rather than state this as fact.

Even on the best professional tape decks, 7 1/2 IPS is extremely limited in terms of noise, FR and distortion. When the first recording ADCs became available in the 1970s and 1980s they were already superior to 7 1/2 IPS tape. A modern $200 ADC will be considerably superior!

You may simply prefer the sound of noise and distortion. This seems to be quite a strong preference.
 
You need to include the phrase "in my opinion", rather than state this as fact.

Even on the best professional tape decks, 7 1/2 IPS is extremely limited in terms of noise, FR and distortion. When the first recording ADCs became available in the 1970s and 1980s they were already superior to 7 1/2 IPS tape. A modern $200 ADC will be considerably superior!

You may simply prefer the sound of noise and distortion. This seems to be quite a strong preference.
Reality these day's is a bi..h an is probably for many something else. Regarding audio can't harm an if everybody happy thats fine. Was reading scientific Dutch artikel regarding our environment pollution Co2 etc etc that is really scary how people disregard Evidence/Reality. Imo ( reading the artikel) mostly from an economic/financial convenience point of view whats new :facepalm:
 
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I have lots of analogue recordings on CD.

Presumably at some point someone has taken a master tape, stuck it on an Otari or Studer machine, and made a digital copy - then hence to the CD.

I'm sure we can all agree nothing audible is lost when making that digital recording, or in the playback of it.

So when I play those CDs in my home, am I not effectively listening to the Otari or Studer reel to reel that was used to transfer the analogue recording to digital?

But yes, it does look cooler than a CD player.
 
I had a Revox HS77 for many years and loved it, but the quality of the tape back then was all over the place: some tape had a lot more background hiss than others: some caused a lot more head wear…..
I wonder if the tape you can buy today is any better?
 
Revox is releasing a new tape machine Revox B77 MKIII. I never understood the appeal of tape machine outside of the studio, what was the purpose of it? To record FM radio auditions? Basic piracy? Anyway, the price is 15,950.00€ (not a typo), tape not included, but you can buy some music on tape from their music shop: https://w15h.revox.com/en/music-shop/
The bad news is albums START at 339€. The slightly better news and a really cool thing is they are selling fully refurbished and calibrated MKI and MKII models for around half the price of MKIII.
As an industry insider I contacted Revox to purchase the tapes and the new “Yello” edition B77 MkIII. They put me in touch with a US based reseller
Who did not understand wholesale. I went back to Revox head office who have basically ignored any questions or inquiries. Hard to sell a new product if you can’t make the effort to talk to people who want to buy it!! Beware their customer service is non existent.
 
As an industry insider I contacted Revox to purchase the tapes and the new “Yello” edition B77 MkIII. They put me in touch with a US based reseller
Who did not understand wholesale. I went back to Revox head office who have basically ignored any questions or inquiries. Hard to sell a new product if you can’t make the effort to talk to people who want to buy it!! Beware their customer service is non existent.
I had the same experience when they discontinued the PR 99 - wouldn't sell me 10, or even just one while visiting the very factory. I had a number of dealers, Music Stores really, lined up, all wanted more for customers. Too bad. I just picked up a B77 MkII for a measly 250.-. She had a rough life, but with about 500.- in parts and some elbow grease she'll run fine again for many years to come. Maybe if you posed as a Sheiks representative with an address in Dubai, you could have worked something out?
 
Restoring a B77 is fun but not easy. The mechanic side of it is straightforward. Swapping out all old capacitors is very time-consuming. The calibration is actually not so difficult. I have used REW software to measure, as that shows frequency response, phase, and distortion. So you can adjust and measure until you have the best result. To do this, you need to calibrate your soundcard output to determine where the 0.775V is. You can do without the calibration tape if you are not recording. You need it to set the tape's saturation level, meaning the recording level to 0VU = 0.775V on the output. This can probably be done by measuring with REW by looking where the distortion and frequency level stars show degrading levels.

See Revox-Online Revox-online-shop, as they can sell you all circuit boards for 1399€. This will save you many hours of work..

The calibration measurements are after my initial calibration. There are still some that can be improved.
 

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