A complete mechanical and electronic restoration of one of the finest professional reel to reel digitizing machines ever built and why the machine you choose for your reel to reel tape transfer matters more than you think.
The Studer A807 occupies a particular place in recorded sound history. Introduced in the mid-1980’s as a cost-reduced successor to the legendary A80, it retained that distinctly Swiss engineering DNA: overbuilt transport mechanics, a rock solid capstan servo, and some of the cleanest electronics ever put into a professional tape machine. Professional studios, broadcast houses, and mastering facilities around the world relied on them for serious work …and for good reason.
The A807’s weakness, however, was the very thing that made it impressive. It was an electronics heavy machine for its era, sophisticated, complex, and deeply dependent on components that are now either obsolete, impossible to source, or both. Add to that the fact that the pool of technicians who genuinely understand these machines has shrunk to almost nothing, and you begin to understand why so many A807s have ended up exactly where this one did dead, shelved, and slowly deteriorating in a corner somewhere.
Restoring one properly today requires both the technical knowledge and the patience to source what no longer exists, reverse engineer what can’t be sourced, and do it all without the safety net of a manufacturer that still supports the machine. It is not work for the faint hearted which is exactly why so few people still do it.
It arrived non functional and filthy, the kind of machine that makes most people give up and look for a cheap consumer deck to run their tape transfers on. Years of dust, grime, and oxide buildup covered every surface. The transport was almost completely dead and nearly unresponsive to any command. On top of that, the guide roller arm was bent and missing the roller and end cap, meaning that even if the transport had been working, threading tape through the machine would have been impossible. Whoever had last used this machine had walked away from it and never returned.
Nearly all reel to reel machines need repair as even the youngest decks are close to 25 years old today. Studer manufactured the A807 MKI from 1986-1991 and the MKII from 1992-2002.
We think a neglected Studer in any condition is worth saving and worth saving properly. Where others see a broken machine, we see a precision instrument that simply needs the right hands. If you have a Studer A807, A810, A812, A820, A80, or any professional Studer machine sitting unused we may be interested in purchasing it. We buy used Studer machines, restore them to full factory specification, and put them back to work performing archival quality professional reel to reel digitizing that cheaper equipment simply cannot match.
When you send your reel to reel tapes to Audio Conservation, they are transferred on machines like this fully restored, professionally aligned, and calibrated to the exacting standards of professional studio equipment. Whether your tape is a studio master or a home recording made decades ago on whatever machine was available, the quality of your transfer depends entirely on the deck doing the playback. Ours are restored and aligned properly, so every transfer captures exactly what is on your tape, nothing more, nothing less.
It is also worth noting that the A807 is a half-track machine. For quarter-track recordings, the format used by most home reel to reel machines we use specially modified Studer decks fitted with quarter-track heads, ensuring your tapes are played back in the correct format regardless of how they were originally recorded.
That is what separates a true archival tape transfer from a generic digitizing service, and it is why our transfers rank among the finest available anywhere in the United States.
| Available Configurations | Mono · Stereo · ½" 4-Track |
| Tape Width | ¼ inch · ½ inch (4-track) |
| Track Configuration | Mono · 2-Track Stereo · 4-Track |
| Tape Speeds (Depending on Model) | 3¾ · 7½ · 15 · 30 ips |
| Head Configuration | Erase / Record / Repro |
| Frequency Response | 30 Hz – 22 kHz |
| THD at +6 dBu | < 0.5% |
| Wow & Flutter (DIN) | < 0.03% |
Every restoration begins not with tools but with patience. Before a single screw comes out, you have to understand the machine’s full condition, what it’s been through, where it was stored, how it was used. On this A807, the assessment took the better part of a day.
It was clear from the first inspection that this machine had been sitting untouched for a very long time. Beyond the layers of dirt and grime covering every surface and the broken guide roller arm, the problems ran deep. The pinch roller was completely soft and gummy, far beyond any reasonable use. The capstan motor turned freely by hand but was bone dry, running without any lubrication whatsoever. The brake pads on both reel tables were caked in dirt and dust, the reel motor bearings stiff and coated in dried grease that had long since stopped doing its job.
That was just the mechanical side. On the electronics bench things got more interesting. A blown dual peripheral driver IC, a visibly bulging Frako capacitor, and a dead bridge rectifier were among the first casualties to reveal themselves and these were just the obvious problems. With a machine this electronics heavy and this long neglected, the obvious problems are rarely the whole story.
"The signal that lives on your tape is only as good as the machine reading it back. An out of alignment deck doesn't just sound worse, it can physically stress the tape on every single pass."
Restoration on a machine like this is a sequence of careful, interdependent steps, each one building on the last. Skip ahead, and you will spend hours chasing problems that could have been solved at the start.
Every surface, panel, and internal component was thoroughly cleaned. Years of accumulated dirt, dust, and oxide were removed before any mechanical or electronic work began, a clean machine is the only honest starting point for a restoration of this depth and the foundation of accurate reel to reel digitizing.
Every switch and contact point in the machine was cleaned and treated with DeoxIT Shield. Oxidized contacts are a silent source of intermittent faults and signal degradation, on an electronics-heavy machine like the A807 this step alone can resolve problems that would otherwise take hours to diagnose.
All motor shafts, windings, and components were cleaned throughout. Every bearing in the machine was replaced with SKF equivalents, the same manufacturer trusted in precision industrial and aerospace applications. Stiff, dry bearings affect transport stability in ways that show up directly in wow and flutter measurements and long term reliability.
All brake bands were thoroughly cleaned. Contaminated brakes are unpredictable, they can grip too hard, too soft, or inconsistently, any of which creates problems for tape handling and transport control. Clean, properly adjusted brakes are essential for safe tape operation.
Every capacitor in the machine was replaced, not just the audio path, the entire machine. This included the visibly bulging Frako capacitor that had already failed and was likely contributing to broader circuit instability. Unfortunately nearly all Studer machines are in need of complete capacitor replacement and the Frakos are all known to cause problems. In addition most of the old Philips caps were measuring at half value. On a machine of this age and this electronics heavy, a selective recap is not a recap it is just postponing the inevitable.
Out of specification transistors and resistors were identified and replaced. All fuses and bridge rectifiers in the power supply section were replaced as a matter of course, a failed rectifier had already been found, and in the Studer A807 the originial bridge rectifiers failing is a known issue.
All SN75463 dual peripheral driver ICs were replaced throughout the machine, including the blown unit found during the initial assessment. These chips are critical to transport control and their failure or marginal operation can cause erratic or unpredictable transport behaviour. Replacing all of them eliminates the problem at the root.
The tension arm was fully rebuilt. The tension arm roller and end cap were replaced, restoring correct tape tension sensing to the transport. Tape tension that is too high or too low affects both the mechanical stability of the tape path and the accuracy of reel to reel digitizing it is not a detail that can be overlooked.
The tape heads and tacho sensor were thoroughly cleaned. Oxide and contaminant buildup on the heads directly degrades playback quality and can cause dropout. A clean head surface is a prerequisite for any meaningful alignment work.
The heads were carefully demagnetised. Residual magnetism accumulates gradually through normal use and adds a layer of noise to every playback while partially erasing high frequency content on repeated passes, damage that is invisible until you measure it.
With the machine mechanically and electronically rebuilt, full calibration was performed to Studer factory specification bias, sensitivity, equalization, tape tension, brake timing, and transport adjustments all set and verified by the service manual. This is the step that separates a machine that has been repaired from one that has been properly restored and is ready for professional reel to reel digitizing.
After a complete mechanical and electronic restoration covering every system in the machine, the Studer A807 was ready to be evaluated. The results spoke for themselves, transport rock solid, electronics clean and quiet, heads aligned and calibrated to factory specification. Everything that had been neglected, broken, or worn out by age had been addressed and returned to proper working order.
But beyond anything a meter can tell you, there is a quality to a properly restored Studer that any experienced tape engineer will recognise the moment the transport engages. The reels accelerate and brake with smooth, unhurried certainty. The tape lays against the heads uniformly without flutter or wander. The capstan holds speed with the kind of authority that only comes from a machine that has been properly rebuilt from the ground up, not patched, not cleaned up cosmetically, but genuinely restored.
This machine is now performing professional reel to reel digitizing at Audio Conservation. If you have 1/4″ half track reel to reel tapes that deserve to be heard properly, this is the machine that will do it.
Every transfer we make is done on restored, calibrated, professional grade equipment because the machine is just as important as the tape. We handle ¼ inch, ½ inch, 1 inch and 2 inch reels at all speeds.
Every tape machine that is properly restored is more than a piece of working equipment, it is a preservation instrument capable of recovering sound that exists nowhere else in the world. The recordings made on reel to reel tape span an enormous range: home recordings of family gatherings, professional studio masters, demo recordings by artists who went on to great things and by artists who didn’t. All of it encoded on magnetic tape that is, slowly and inevitably, degrading.
When you send your tapes to Audio Conservation our reel to reel digitizing is performed on machines like this one fully restored, properly aligned, and calibrated to factory specification. Whether your tape is a professional master or a home recording made decades ago, the quality of your reel to reel digitizing depends entirely on the machine doing the playback. Ours are restored and maintained properly so that every transfer captures exactly what is on your tape nothing more, nothing less.
If you have tapes you care about, the right time for reel to reel digitizing is now.
Over the years we have built a collection of professional tape machines, each restored, aligned and dedicated to a specific format or tape speed. A collection of 3 3/4 ips home recordings calls for a different alignment than a set of 15 ips professional masters.
That ongoing relationship with Studer equipment means we are always interested in acquiring machines in need of restoration. If you have a Studer sitting unused, we would be glad to hear from you.
Do you have a Studer A807, A80, A810, A812, A820 or A827 reel-to-reel machine sitting idle? We regularly purchase machines and are interested in hearing from you. Contact us today.
Place your order, pack your reels and ship them to us. We do the rest on fully restored machines, professional reel to reel digitizing and your original tapes returned safely along with your digital files.
