Revox A77 Mk1

The Swiss benchmark. Every studio had at least one.

You couldn’t walk into a radio station or a recording studio in the early 1970s without tripping over one of these. The A77 was Revox’s first solid-state machine, and it did something unusual for its time: it brought genuinely professional transport engineering into a box a home enthusiast could actually afford and operate.

Introduced

1967 · Switzerland

Motors

3-motor, solenoid logic

Speeds

1⅞ / 3¾ / 7½ / 15 ips

Reels

Up to 10½″

Tracks

3-head stereo

Wow & Flutter

0.08% @ 7½ ips

Frequency Response

30 Hz – 20 kHz @ 7½ ips

Weight

15.5 kg

SECTION 01

The Merits

Three motors and solenoid-controlled transport logic, in 1967, in a machine ordinary people could buy — that combination is why the A77 became the default deck of an entire era. Press a button and electromagnetic brakes and solenoids handle the mode change instead of your hand fighting a mechanical lever; it feels closer to a professional broadcast deck than anything else at this price point ever did.

It’s also the most flexible transport in this collection: four speeds, from a dictation-slow 1⅞ ips up to a proper 15 ips for serious recording. Nothing else on this shelf covers that whole range in one machine.

It didn’t just compete with the professional decks of its day. For a while, it more or less was the professional deck of its day.

SECTION 02

The Quirks

Early Mk1 units like this one shipped with nylon brake shoes, which is a decision Revox quietly walked back — nylon wears unevenly and can grab, so most surviving A77s of this vintage have had it swapped for the later cotton-pad brakes at some point. It’s worth knowing which one is in front of you before you trust a fast rewind at full tension.

The three-motor transport also runs warm. It’s not a fault so much as a fact of the design — enough copper and current in there that the case is noticeably warmer than a single-motor deck after an evening’s use.

SECTION 03

The Sound

Neutral and unhurried, the way you’d expect from a machine that spent its working life recording other people’s masters rather than flattering a living room. It doesn’t editorialize — it just gets out of the way of whatever’s on the tape, which is precisely the job a studio workhorse is supposed to do.

SECTION 04

Buying One

These are common enough that condition matters more than rarity when you’re shopping. Ask specifically which brake shoes are fitted, and budget for a service on the pinch roller and idler regardless — this machine is old enough now that original rubber is original rubber, however well it was stored.

How mine runs in the Philippines

This is a European machine with a synchronous capstan motor tied to mains frequency, not a servo-driven design — worth checking the rating plate and the motor pulley on any unit before you assume it’s correct for 60 Hz. A 50 Hz-spec motor run on Philippine mains will play back roughly a fifth fast unless the pulley or motor was already swapped for export.

That’s the whole collection.

All twenty machines in the collection now have their own write-up. Thanks for reading this far — explore the rest of the collection, or start again from the top.