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Revox A77: my nostalgia machine
by David Lee
Audio nostalgia: the Akai tape deck from 1976
21.9.2023
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
This cassette player is as old as I am. I’m talking ancient. But it still runs like it did on day one, and it brings back childhood memories.
The Akai GXC-39D from 1976 should’ve been given a better name. It’s a great tape deck, after all. The design is super solid and the sounds surprisingly good, even today. Technical highlights include a limiter, which automatically prevents overdrive, and a memory button that stops the tape at zero when rewinding. Like all hi-fi equipment from the seventies, the Akai cassette tries hard to look like a piece of furniture. It doesn’t quite manage to pull it off, but still exudes a certain charm.
Obviously, it’s pure nostalgia that’s making me use cassettes in the first place in this day and age. Kind of like with the big tape machine.
From a nostalgia angle, the tape deck is the most valuable to me. It’s an heirloom of the Lee family and associated with many childhood memories. Before I was entrusted with it, it was given to my father by his brother. It was kept in a cupboard in the living room, and when I was a boy, I had to stand on the slightly raised base of the cupboard to operate it.
Repaired
Last year I managed to save the thing from a large-scale decluttering operation. As with most old cassette players, the drive belts were shot and the player no longer worked. At first, I thought I’d be able to fix it myself. I’d done it before, after all, and it was surprisingly easy.
But some cassette players are trickier to fix. With this one, disassembling the parts proved much more difficult. What’s more, I couldn’t find any belts for this model on thakker.eu and had to resort to an unknown Ebay supplier.
Eventually, I gave up. I didn’t have the time or the patience to invest many hours in something I’m no good at. And so I had a professional do it. He found other problems in addition to the drive belts. The motor needed a new capacitor and the tape tension monitor needed repair. A new pressure roller was also due. I might have managed the latter myself, but no chance for the rest.
Update: You can’t actually do that. The plug still needs to have two pins.
Not bad for its age
Not only is the player up and running again, it also sounds great! And this in spite of the fact that the audio head is almost half a century old and was used frequently. The capacitors also still seem to be fine. No doubt, quality was built into Japanese hi-fi of the seventies.
The audio head contains glass and ferrite instead of the soft iron that was common at the time, making it more resistant to wear. Incidentally, the first two letters of the name GXD-39D are derived from «Glass & X’tal Ferrite Head». Having said that, I’ve no idea what X’tal stands for. But hey, since learning that, I can handle the unwieldy name of the cassette player better.
David Lee
Senior Editor
David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.chMy interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.
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