Hi Chris,
In an area there are about three bridge rectifiers. They can overheat and should be replaced by higher current models (that fit!). Most people add a heat sink and grease to help get rid of the heat. My memory is quite hazy on the details, but this is a real Revox modification. Let's just say I've worked on way more A and B-77 machines. The A-700 is a wonderfully smooth operating machine with great sound quality. This would be the machine I would wish for if I were in the market. It is something special.
-Chris
In an area there are about three bridge rectifiers. They can overheat and should be replaced by higher current models (that fit!). Most people add a heat sink and grease to help get rid of the heat. My memory is quite hazy on the details, but this is a real Revox modification. Let's just say I've worked on way more A and B-77 machines. The A-700 is a wonderfully smooth operating machine with great sound quality. This would be the machine I would wish for if I were in the market. It is something special.
-Chris
high end price yes but what about a high end performance starting point? Now that is much harder to quantify in an off hand way.
I would go by performance and not price. How many SOTA products are reviewed in Hi-End mags..... not many even exist. SOTA isnt necessarily related to DBLT resulting specs.
I mean F1 level. Not what is needed for basic transport.... SOTA.
Which makes and models are SOTA level in analog and digital audio products?
THx-RNMarsh
Hi Chris,
Thanks very much for the heads-up. Someday I need to open it up to tackle some sticky meter movements issue (sob...).
Over the summer I restored a Dragon for a local guy who had intended to sell it on. When he got it home and played with it some, he kept it and is enjoying it himself. Lovely machine and very elegant. And fun!
Thanks very much, as always,
Chris
Thanks very much for the heads-up. Someday I need to open it up to tackle some sticky meter movements issue (sob...).
Over the summer I restored a Dragon for a local guy who had intended to sell it on. When he got it home and played with it some, he kept it and is enjoying it himself. Lovely machine and very elegant. And fun!
Thanks very much, as always,
Chris
I had a 300 for a while and was dubbing vinyl from a decent 'table, arm, and Shure V15. What a great bunch of tapes! I would send them to my retired parents, by and large, but otherwise listen to them in my car.
"perfect fidelity" = what is perfect ?
Sources can be (almost) perfect , amps can be PPM (almost) perfect ...
loudspeakers NOT so perfect.
This in itself is a compromise , especially for the atmospheric interface - the speakers.
Even the (more) perfect parts of the chain , like the amp ... are a series
of compromises. Like trading off PPM for a specific THD "structure" ... or
stability/slew , versus reliability in a design.
The correct "compromise" is essential for SQ. Compromise in materials ,
I would agree - BAD.
OS
LNE sounds like a former railway company in Britain: London North East?
So works flat out for 1000 miles then explodes? Most of that was weeded out in the 80s. Hifi is generally an order of magnitude more reliable than F1 now.
Hi dvv,
The Nakamichi would have left the others in the dust had it been calibrated properly. Not the auto-cal. The factory tape is TDK SA-60, the Nakamichi tapes are center cut from SA and SAX tapes. Maxell will usually be about +5 dB at 10 KHz, so it wants a hotter bias level.
We discovered that the high frequency azimuth tape was way off spec. When we mentioned this to Nakamichi they told us that very few shops had discovered this problem.
It sounds as if the tape path was out mechanically and maybe electrically too. The tape head electronics was a proper low noise setup and they used a form of sendust head. Very low tape hiss and a clear, open sound is normal for a Nak in alignment. There is no way that machine was properly adjusted. That's too bad, because you missed out on an amazing machine. I have a BX-300 and a Dragon (rather have a 1000ZXL). I do know the auto-calibration works very well as long as the machine is in tolerance. When it isn't .. yuck by comparison. I also have a Teac V-800x that is hand tuned. It seems that the dolby C and dBx can't co-exist on that machine, so I picked dBx. It worked properly with a calibration that was normal. The Nak was also hand tuned (both by me) and the Nak is very clearly a better machine. I was a Teac believer until I finished my first Nakamichi calibration on a three head machine.
Both dBx and Dolby C amplify any differences between record and play calibration. They can both be very brutal if they aren't working properly.
Metal tapes!That stuff is really abrasive. It's almost as bad as Memorex (real Chromium Dioxide !! more like lapping tape).
-Chris
Chris, I'll take your word for it, but the end rsult for a regular buyer was still worse on the Nak than on the Sony, we can argue no end how and why this is so, but the Sony was easy to set up (nicely explained in the manual) and did afford a better sonic result than the Nak in auto bias. Also, my experience tells me there's a lot of perception here - Nakamichi was famous for its cassette decks, and the Dragon sold a boatful of their lesser decks, which had a MUCH harder time with the competition, not many ever dared, let alone actually tried to compete with the Dragon.
Just like the Revox B77. It was revered in Europe, partly due to truly excellent mechanics and its reliability and because Studer was behind ir, and we all know aht Studer usually made and for whom. I was burned on the stake many times when I said that there were better SOUNDUNG decks around - sacrelidge, how can anything be better whan we all "know" who's behind Revox. ASC series 5000 and 6000 were in my view better. So was the Philips N4520 model, which in fact replaced the Revox B77 as Stereo's (best selling German audio magatine) reference open rell deck in 1981, believe it or not, because it had "superior mechanics". But Philips neved made it big time, because it was perceived as a "from pin to nuclear station" manufacturer selling a lot of fridges and washing machines. I should know, I had one for 15 years or so.
So it was with cassette decks. Nakamichi made their name with them, they had thousands of pictures of The Dragon in various sudios published in ads all around the world, and were eventually percieved as unable of doing asnything wrong with a cassette decx., even when they started making preamp, power amps, integrated amps, and receivers, and even NAMCO loudspeakers which incidentally were not bad at all).
Because I know all this, while I can't escape 100% from raising my expectations from products from a reputable source, I still trust my own hands-on experience way more than any reputation. The Nak deck I had for the test run was a model quite below the DraGON STANDARDS, but of corurse at an adequately lower price čevel. And in mechanical terms, the Sony is not one bit worse made than the Nak, in fact the Nak felt much more platicky under my hands. Still, no 14 day test I do can ever hope to evaluate the service life length and overall reliablity of two items, and both were made in the let's-not-save-money here (3 heads, 3 motors, quartz locked drive motor, dual capstans, full logic commend board, the works), so I can't comment on possible differences which might turn up over serious service life, but the fact is that my Sony is still around and in excellent operating condition.
Like running 63V caps at 75V perchance?
I think that august company from London even had an amplifier called the F1 - but I may be open to correction.
The F1 range was tag mclaren (well audiolab).
Laboratoire National d'Essais in Paris.
(equivalent of the TNO here, TUV in Germany)
You have been Tag-ged for sota processing, Mr. Russell.
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And what is a vintage ReVox A77 worth today? I have one sitting for the last 30 years that would surely need to be serviced but still in vintage condition sitting on the shelf. Who could bring it back to life as it should be and what in the world would that cost? I can imagine what all those capacitors would be like after sitting all these years.
Like running 63V caps set 80V perchance?
I just finished repairs on a Classe M700 that ran 70V caps at 72V nominal (76 volts measured) in a hot environment. Amazingly, a power supply failure is what landed the amp on my bench.
Sy,
It is amazing how many will design something just a bit past the nominal max rating and expect a long working life. Not something any real engineer would consider a practical solution with any margin of safety.
Never heard back from you on the NDA so we could discuss that patent idea?
It is amazing how many will design something just a bit past the nominal max rating and expect a long working life. Not something any real engineer would consider a practical solution with any margin of safety.
Never heard back from you on the NDA so we could discuss that patent idea?
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