Re: [ARSCLIST] Repairing (or purchasing) a Uher

["Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Barbara,

As you know, I've been thinking about your project, and I've come up 
with a good answer that I think makes the most sense for you in 
today's end-of-life tape recorder market.

I think it was actually Steve Smolian's suggestion of using ReVox 
B77/PR99 loggers that run 15/16 and 1-7/8 to play these speeds. I'm 
not 100% sure that the heads are compatible but they could be changed 
out if necessary.

These machines are somewhat reparable as there is a semi-steady 
source from parted-out machines. In fact, the guy who has two for 
sale, Cory Halverson, was going to part them out as a source for 
B77/PR99 parts. That's one of the reasons that the price is what it 
is--the machines are worth more to him in parts than as a complete 
machine. Anyway, he has two with reel scratches on the faceplates, 
and he'd like $500 each for them. I would suggest getting both for 
your application.

As I said, I am very pleased with my approach to these speeds and it 
integrates with my general playback of other speeds reasonably well, 
so I'm not interested in paying that kind of money to duplicate what 
I do on the Sony APR-5000s, but I can't recommend that for you as it 
isn't straight forward and APR-5000s are about as hard to have 
serviced as Uhers, sadly.

Anyway if you're interested, please contact Cory Halverson 
mailto:cory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or call Phone (306) 569-1212  He's 
in Regina....not too far from you, but probably shipping is cheaper 
than driving to pick them up.

Also, for service, the manuals are available at 
ftp://ftp.studer.ch/Public/Products/Revox_B77%20MkI-MkII/Manuals/

If you choose to go the APR route, the manuals are available at

http://www.richardhess.net/apr/
username: apr
password: apr5003v

A friend, Eddie Ciletti is in Chicago and is a good person to service 
pro tape machines. I'm pretty sure he services APRs as we've 
discussed it in the past.

If you're not interested in both these machines, please let the list 
know as I'd much rather see these relatively rare machines end up 
with someone who needs them to play their archive rather than parted 
out to keep hobbiests' home machines alive.

Everyone else: be fair, let Barbara have first crack at these machines <smile>.

Cheers,

Richard

At 04:50 PM 6/13/2006, you wrote:
> The University of Chicago Language Laboratories and Archives has 
> four old Uhers (4xxx models) (used by various faculty in the field). 
> None of them works, but two of them seemed repairable. I sent them 
> out at the end of last year and got them back a week or so ago. 
> Apart from personal problems for the proprietor, there was a delay 
> in getting parts from Germany--and then only one machine was 
> actually "repaired". I put it that way because, when it came back, 
> it still did not work properly. Does anyone have any suggestions as 
> to where I can get this repaired? I need the 1 7/8 ips (and would 
> like to have the 15/16 and 3 3/4 ips) for some of the tapes in the archive.
>
> I have looked on eBay. Prices seemed good (but I was delayed on 
> bidding due to questions of who will pay!), but I have never used 
> eBay and don't have a sense of whether I will actually get something 
> that works. Does anyone have any suggestions?  of alternatives?
>
> Barbara
>
> Barbara Need
> Manager (SS4), Computer Support, Archivist

Richard L. Hess                   email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.