Studer A812 available for sale in Netherlands

I shouldn't have but I am adding another rare R2R machine to my collection. It is a Lyrec TR55 and it's on its way to Seattle from The Masters Audio Mastering studio in Netherlands.

Maarten de Boer, the owner, also has two Studer A812s in very good to excellent conditions for sale. One is in perfect working condition at 1750 Euros and the other needs some work at 1000 Euros. I thought about getting the non-working one but got over it.

Based on the photos I have seen, I can tell they were well taken care of.

Let me know if you would be interested in the A812. I can send you the link with login and PWD info for the photos. The crating and shipping charge would be around 550 Euros to US.

Great Adrian:

Just sent a message to Maarten and copied you.

Good luck with the A812.

Ki

jdza said:

I have become terrified of the computer controlled Studers i.e A810 and later. Despite having new boards and the latest software my A810 has a nasty habit of ,after 90 minutes from switch on ,to jump from Replay and " Safe" to Record and "Ready" in milliseconds. This has left a nice gap of nonsense in the middle of a priceless safety master. "The Error66 " it then proudly displays is hardly any consolation!

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Hi jdza:
Sorry to hear about the damaged tape.

It is my opinion the Studer A810 with its known issues, once overhauled - it will perform to its spec for years to come.

Has you A810 been worked on within last few years?

Having dealt with numerous A810s with various challenging issues, some of the known issues are:

1) All Electrolytic caps on Basis board. I have replaced the famous Frako kinds without thinking. Even the later blue Philips electrolytic caps should be replaced. I have seen exploded caps, completely shorted caps (that kill the power supply), leaky caps, and others I can't recall all...
2) Electrolytic caps on Power Supply board. Mainly the bigger cap for the logic voltage must be replaced even if they work well today.
3) two electrolytic caps on LED/LCD display are prone to short
4) rechargeable battery that can leak and damage the MPU board
5) most of the chips on A810s are TTL chips but the capstan control board has many CMOS chips that I have found to be bad
I can't remember the rest but... maybe I should start a repair log thread...

Overall, the Studer A810 is a very well designed machine with easy service and long operation in mind. The documentation is one of the best. Most of the cards and parts are interchangeable from the very early model to the most current A810.
Judging from your description of erratic behavior after period time after power up, I would have to guess that you have power supply issue especially for the main +5.6V. Or the VU meter panel should be swapped with left and right if only one channel is having problem in order to isolate the problem.

On the other hand, I had seen MPU board that had previous battery leak that caused corrosion in the circuit traces and the chip sockets that resulted in similar erratic operation.

If you are interested in troubleshooting or needing parts for your A810, we can have a discussion offline.

amirm said:

How good are the A812s guys? Worth getting? Anything to watch out for?

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We haven't answered Amir's question.

From your other post, the A812 may not work for you since it is in console configuration. Besides, it is a poor man's A820 with same audio section but simplified transport control with same headblock and tape path as A810.

Hi Amir:

I'll have to look at it one more time but as I recall, unlike the console A810 that can be easily converted into a portable configuration, the A812 has a much wider card cage than its transport body width and may not fit. You could turn a A807 from a console to portable but A820 and A812 may be in the same catagory as the "wide-body" Studers meant for console form use only. I will look at A812 manual when I get the chance and confirm.