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Author Topic: Revox/Studer A700  (Read 9703 times)

Offline analogfan

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Revox/Studer A700
« on: December 04, 2009, 01:20:31 PM »
Hello there,

I am a Tape Project Forum newbee.

I have an opportunity to acquire a Revox/Studer A700 in excellent condition.  Is this a suitable R2R for tape project tape playback or should I continue the hunt for a mint Otari or Technics recommended by the tape project?

Anyone have any direct experience with the A700 for archiving vinyl?  The closest thing to anything decent I have owned was a Pioneer RT909 which pretty and "OK" for recording, but not great.

Thank you,

Bob Edwards

Offline Tubes n tapes

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Re: Revox/Studer A700
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2009, 07:29:36 PM »
Hi Bob,

Welcome to this forum.
I own a Revox A700 (among several other machines). As a transport the A700 is one of the most interesting machines, shy of the large Studer's. The A700 shares its transport with the Studer A67 / B67. The interesting part of the transport is that it has regulated tape tension during play, FF and Rew, and during braking. Especially the last feature is quite unique outside the class of state of the art  recording studio machines. You can use a 5" plastic reel on one side and a 10.5" metal reel on the other side and the A700 manoeuvres flawlessly, even with triple play tape.

That was the good news, now the bad news: The audio electronics are quite terrible because of the use of very early opamps. Because of the pinout those early opamps cannot easily be replaced by modern ones. Also all the other components are of a typical early 1970s quality, which was not an era to be proud of in that sense. The result is that the A700 doesn't sound very good, not with playback and not with recording.

So I cannot recommend the stock A700 for high end audio. If you would use external audio electronics you would have a very nice tape setup with the A700 because the tape handling is quite unmatched and it uses the same high performance heads as the other Studer and Revox machines.

 
Arian Jansen.

SonoruS Audio.
VP of technology of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS).
ESL/OTL builder and modest Studer/ReVox collector.

Offline kitjunkie

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Re: Revox/Studer A700
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2009, 05:36:25 AM »
Arian,

Out of curiosity, how do you use external electronics, and who makes them?

Thanks,

Steve
Steve Rigby
Location: Boston...soon to be Scottsdale

Offline microstrip

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Re: Revox/Studer A700
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2009, 05:47:43 PM »
Out of curiosity, how do you use external electronics, and who makes them?
For playback look for Bottlehead - I am almost finishing the assembly of an Eros head amplifier for my A700!
Francisco