Studer Museum Starter Kit

No more beautiful audio machine has been designed than Reel to Reel. To have so many of them next to each other must put a smile on your face Bruce. It does for me and I don't even own them!

I wish I had them here

Pretty awesome Bruce!!!
I second the KI factor

I wish I had Ki in my neighborhood so I could get one

You guys are too kind in talking about me...thank you.

The first A80 in the photo and the A810 have the Flux Magnetic Extended Response Repro head from JRF Science.

These analog R2R machines in general are never precise especially when it comes to the frequency responses. Studer factory spec for more modern heads on A810 at 15 ips is 30hz - 20Khz +/- 2dB which is nothing to write home about... It's not just Studers. Based on my personal experience with other studio master recorders, only Sony APR5003 has better actual measurements. However, Studer machines with FMER repro head Bruce uses, the tolerance gets much better at +/- 1/2dB every time. It seems they have finally figured out how to make good heads. (This sentence didn't come out right.) ;-)

I would recommend the FMER repro head to anyone who strives for the perfection in music reproduction from tapes. Bruce is planning on replacing the repro head in remaining A80.

Ki Choi said:

You guys are too kind in talking about me...thank you.

However, Studer machines with FMER repro head Bruce uses, the tolerance gets much better at +/- 1/2dB every time. It seems they have finally figured out how to make good heads. (This sentence didn't come out right.) ;-)

Click to expand...

Greg has been making the extended response heads for some time, for ATRs. Maybe it's more like the Studer guys have finally figured out where to get good heads. ;^)> That said, we saw exceptionally flat response at 15ips from a stock head A810 with Tube Repro, flatter than with the stock repro. On the other hand the response of my Nagra T is quite good with the stock electronics (FET input) and we had to fiddle with the head damping a bit to get the Tube Repro close. Part of the story is optimizing the band length for a given tape speed, and part of it is picking the right inductance for the electronics.