Studer A810 Overview and Demo

[@almandog]

Mike: This was an awesome demo. I just received an A810 two days ago from the original owner. Love your videos.

[@mphtower]

Thanks for the kind words! I've since learned a lot more about calibrating it and wish I'd known about it when I made this. The tape transport really should be very precise, as it turns out. I hope you love your A810, they're pretty amazing machines!

[@almandog]

@@mphtower Hi Mike: I watched your video twice. You were so thorough. It would greatly appreciated if you could do a video on calibrating the A810 from start to finish, with all the details. Now that would be something many like myself would like to see.

[@asmith4326]

this is an excellent overview some of the capabilities of the A810. thank you for this!

[@thetexasoutlet8781]

That’s funny, I was trying to test an A810 like yours watching your video and 5 minutes in to it the capacitor exploded 😂😂 my building stinks so bad like burnt electronics now

[@mphtower]

Ha! Who knew Studer decided to use little bombs instead of capacitors?

[@nikreichel2232]

This Frako-Capacitors tended to fail and unfortunately short circuit in all the B77's I repaired until now. So get rid of them as soon as possible! That's my advice. ;)

[@stackoverflow8260]

In the portable version, I see a red knob sticking out of the head block, what is that ? PS: You answered this later in the video.

[@mphtower]

That's a splicing knife. It was available as an option on any model.

[@vickykundra4220]

Please u guide me no lights in peripheral controller

[@TheStuderman]

Is it xlr in and out at back and what is the quality of the headphone amps? Thnaks.

[@mphtower]

Yes, it's XLR for out, in, and time code. The headphone amp sounds pretty good to me, but I didn't compare recordings of the signals to see if there's a marked difference.

[@TheStuderman]

@@mphtower Thank you.

[@teachingincontext]

Did you sell the Studer?

[@dubdoodle7191]

No wonder Studer Repro heads wear prematurely ! Head should not be touching tape in fast winding unless engaged to do so for short term cue'ing purposes

[@jameslister6717]

This a810 needs to be calibrated!

[@mphtower]

Hey there. I have a guess as to why you say that, but can you let me know why? My guess is because the tape I was using as a sample was pegging the meters a few times. That's an old tape, and I believe the machine was calibrated at 250 nWb/m across all four speeds at the time. It's now at 355 @ 15 and 20 and 250 @ 3.75 and 7.5. But, maybe there's something else going on that I don't know about and I'd love to find out.

[@jameslister6717]

First thing I noticed is the tension needs to be calibrated For eg When you search zero it should be very smooth and shouldn’t shutter The supply tension guide is where I would start and then the take up guide as written in the manual and then set up electronics You will need a tentelometer for playback If you have too much tension you will wear out the heads quickly Second of all the tape formula you recorded on needs to be biased to the machine The levels on playback are louder in the video at 7.5” then the input from what I can tell But anyway Tension needs to set up first and then the audio You should be able to monitor input and output at the vu meter And they should be same Obviously the higher speed the better the frequency response but even at the slowest speed I would expect flat to 16k +\- 3db depending on head condition I love the studer a810 I’m refurbishing one at the moment myself Great machine!

[@innalanovaya4565]

Hi I have an A810 that needs to be adjusted and calibrated. And .might be capacitors need to be changed too. Will be able to help me with this? Thanks

[@mphtower]

@@jameslister6717 oh man, I totally forgot to respond to you until just now, so my apologies for the delay. And you're absolutely right! This machine ended up getting calibrated by Bob Shuster and the braking, etc, worked far better after that. I've restored two more since then and your message (which came before Bob's calibration) encouraged me to dive into this more. I got a lot closer on the second and third machines, but couldn't get them as precise as Bob did. Thanks!