My Repair charges are very reasonable…Workshop time is billed at £50 per hour. I have reference tapes and can calibrate all 1/4″  2 or 4 track decks for speed and azimuth and I am happy to swap heads and worn parts etc if you source your own etc.

If you need me to look at a TEAC 1/2″ machine… I need a tape and empty spool to play with, so please supply one when you bring it in.

YES I DO do repairs to REEL-REEL decks……however lets explain a few things first. (Ok so its a bit of a rant I suppose)

I don’t repair….Big old European machines…ie Ferrograph/ Studer/ Revox  (see below for clarification)/Brennel valve decks, Ferguson, Uher, Tandberg & Philips  …unless maybe it is a small issue. I wish to discuss each with you BEFORE you bring them in.. please email for advice.

The main reason for this is that I just don’t ‘get’ European ways of laying out the circuits.. no labels / component refs.. thousands of old capacitors failed…and a myriad more issues. I was brought up on Japanese gear and these sort of ‘talk’ to me where European doesn’t…Does that make sense? I want to stick to doing machines I have a fighting chance to get going again. There are specialists for these other makes out there, so please search on for a fixer that would love to have a go at your machine.

Before anything else… Please clean your heads and guides and make sure the tapes aren’t shedding muck back onto them- often within less than a minute it will clog up again.. This is the single most common issue we get. Many old tapes are shot at! If not the oxide coating, then it can be the back coating coming off. Often I send a machine back clean only for it to come back in within days dirty again…. like that was my fault !!

I also need you to bear in mind that whilst you the owner wants a sensible priced fix… many also want perfection so that they can then sell them as perfect and Ebay them for the £1000+ they fetch..  I often spend many hours..days even fiddling with numerous faults and niggles, to tease out all the faults… I do really try my best but these machines are all like 40 years old or more and have so many problems that years of use…or neglect has given them..  they just are not that reliable at all. Once I fix it, you sell it and ship it… it’s a ballache to get back… I know!

Hey… so imagine ANY niggle shows up….and back they come expecting me to offer all fixes under warranty, spending many more hours…for free discussing and going over these niggles.  I struggle to make repairing many reel machines economically viable.  These machines maybe had a hard life in the 80s/90s then have been abandoned for the past 20+ yrs in less than ideal lodgings. Yet you demand perfection of these 40- 50 yr old machines. Please be realistic in your expectations.

OK rant over…. lets see what is likely wrong and what we can get going.

Smaller domestic AKAI, Pioneer and the likes  yes,  I can usually get these going again enough to allow you to archive some old tapes…Usually they will record too once sorted- but if you intend using them in a studio as a master machine- the quality they give might not live up to your expectations.

Note too..  All these machines have so many niggles- weak motors, old strange sized belts no longer available, big rubber drive tyres likewise..  I do have new options for some…. and maybe 1000 old belts that will often yield a usable one when needed. Special switches should clean up- but some may also stay a bit crackly…and we can’t change them.

Bigger Pro machines   Akai, Pioneer, Teac/Tascam, Otari etc.  Yes I can usually go over and deal with the various issues these present.  Worth a fair bit of money- its worth spending more time to get these right for you if I can.

Specific issues may be weak brush motors on Teacs (I can usually re design the circuit to improve this.)  Big AKAI decks.. many have loads of little transistors gone dead or crackling- yes I can sort these.  Heads are generally  able to last a lifetime… but some Akai heads do have coil problems..  but luckily it is possible to painstakingly take them apart  and reconnect the head coil wires again.  New heads are of course not an option..

REVOX.   Just to clarify where we are on these as these seem to be the most in demand to be fixed.

A77  No never again… not going to get on my bench. Horrid things and besides all capacitors dead, the motherboard with all the rotary switches corroded, usually is just not fixable

B77 PR99.  Yes- I can and will look at these….done quite  a few, but I warn you here of what they usually need to get them back to A1. First- about 100 capacitors need changing as you can get many different faults with the old ones. So I do all these first (after establishing a few baseline things are ok… voltages, motors, heads etc) Often there will then be left  a handful of weird faults… probably a transistor failed to trace and find… or the infra red tape end sensor to replace the 2 detectors. Then they need running on and off for days sometimes to get the relay contacts to bed in and come clean and so the transport logic works reliably. A final calibration and with luck they’re good to go…   but you may have issues with the red lamps or sticking meters… both issues quite time consuming to deal with

Bigger STUDER based machines…. A810  A812  B62 console machines etc.   NO, I won’t even start these. There are maybe a dozen ‘cards’ of components and perhaps 1000 capacitors that might be suspect..  You need someone with experience on them…