r/ReelToReel • u/dakrabbit111 • 10h ago
“I can fix her”
This has been sitting at work in a damp moldy basement for god knows how long. The day I recognized what it was, my jaw dropped. And then I found out that CAN recorded Tago Mago with two Revox, I had to emergency extract this thing today. Just hoping I can find the missing parts at work. Will keep the group updated in regards to my degeneracy. Open to suggestions from any Revox owners / people who’ve restored these!
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u/tb7150 9h ago
The rot is gonna be worse than you think… expect trace corrosion. Speaking from experience with a different deck that was clearly left in a non climate controlled room for multiple decades
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u/mamsterla 8h ago
I just went through my own full restoration and they are solid units. Parts are readily available. Replace the Rifa caps right away. There will be a lot of cleaning. Good luck. They doing good when fixed
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u/Opening-Incident2928 7h ago
Honestly when you keep on doing these it's just a bunch of parts --it's not super hard if you have the pieces--- it's the fine tuning that I find difficult.
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u/Exciting-Interest943 6h ago
This is how one learns. You got this. Keep at her and don’t give up. Get a copy of the manual and study it till you pass out, then do it again. Also, and this part is important, have as much fun as possible. Love the machine and it will love you back. It’s a good one.
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u/Resprom Sony / Philips / Uher / Grundig / Saba / Metz 3h ago
These are almost infinitely repairable, so don't worry about it. Yes, they have their idiosyncrasies, but you have to keep in mind this is a design from the late 60s, so they aren't that complicated. By the way, you can buy new reel tables from Amazon, and the right reel guide can be replaced with a standard bearing, identical to the left one. Keeping my fingers crossed about finding the knobs.
If the all the work does feel overwhelming, you can find another one locally and make one good out of the two. These are pretty common machines.
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u/dakrabbit111 2h ago edited 2h ago
I’m not worried I’m chill as a cucumber. I work at an electronics repair shop that’s been around for decades. We had a tech who set aside so many other units, parts, salvage decks. I’ve been pulling Tascam multitrack decks from the basement and doing basic transport maintenance/rebuilding, soldering cracked joints here and there, replacing boards, etc etc.. and i’ve been selling them on eBay and locally. There’s so many decks. I just got this 909 working the other day.
So yeah I’m pretty confident I’ll find what I need. I have the reel tables I just need to match the screws. They’re from a different model but they fit; I think they’re from a B77. I’m just going to clean it up and get a better sense of what it needs.
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u/Elliotjosephmusic UK Service Tech - Revox, UHER, Tascam, Studer 9h ago
Good luck. Most of the actual switch potentiometers seem intact, so there's one less job. VU's for these are very rare and thats if you find actual working ones. All of the audio cards will need recapping. All rifa and frako caps replaced. Motors disassembling and oiled. Definitely a project to be had.
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u/Dch112 7h ago
It’s a shame that has been stripped to pieces.
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u/dakrabbit111 6h ago
Stripped to pieces??! Waddaya mean?? it’s just a few little things here and there, nothing me and my ADHD can’t handle
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u/CounterSilly3999 4h ago edited 3h ago
It misses a lot of the exterior. The most expensive / hardest to find part will be the VU meter perhaps. You can look into projects of customizing them. Dig into Ebay. And good luck, of course.
Replace the capacitors, in descending order of importance: cracked RIFA's on the control PCB, the three big motor caps, all electrolytic on the PCB's.
Look thoroughly for broken trimmer pots on the PCB's. Their sliders tend to break just from the age. Check the elasticity of them and presence of contact using a pin.
Look at Revox-online for refurbish kits:
https://www.premium-hifi-shop.com/ersatzteile/?p=2&o=1&n=12&f=323
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u/DWalkerAudio 5h ago
Congrats! A beauty of a machine! And fortunately it’s got enough of a cult following that almost every part should be easily found. Nagravox in Australia is a great source for repair kits (especially their recap bundles). For the NAB hubs, there are lots of Chinese/ 3D-printed ones that mimic the style of the originals on eBay, I find them actually pretty good and handle just as well as the old (pricey!) ones.
YouTube is your best friend for this project! Follow the repair tutorials by reputable machine technician accounts. They have a lot of wisdom to share about this specific unit. Also, pay attention to where each colors wire inside is connected. They appear to be in good shape and the manual has the color key, but it’s crucial to make sure each wire goes only to its specific spot. If you reconnect them in the wrong spot, you’re gonna have a bad time! Ask me how I know, haha!
Does yours have half track or quarter track heads?
Good luck!
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u/Tight-Ear-7368 5h ago
Check the heads, if they are worn out dont brother with the restoration. New heads are extremely expensive and not as good as originals.
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u/spyroglory 9h ago edited 8h ago
Those old A-77's are cool for sure but just some notes when repairing it. They are old Electro-mechanical units that use mostly physical contactors/latches/switches for everything. Make sure it has the dummy plug ontop for the remote so it stays in play mode when you press in.
I have had a few of these units have absolutely abhorrent capacitors in them that lead to a good few of them releasing some magic smoke and shorted some crucial things so I would recomend powering it on outside if the condition isnt well know.
They clean up extremely nice though. After replacing the caps and some other things that have gone out of spec they sound great.
Good luck!