I thought I would share the interesting story and history of my recently restored early model Revox G36 acquired from my local market. Every now and then I visit my local market mainly to look for records but on this particular occasion I found an old Revox G36 sitting on a stall and offered $50 for it which was eagerly taken. Now for the surprise as I assumed this was an all tube unit as it dates from the early 1960'S and I took it home assuming I was going to be restoring a tube tapedeck. Image my surprise when confronted with a solid state unit with brand new looking heads in remarkable condition.
Intrigued into who would go to this much effort and why I began researching how this unit came to being solid state. As I am employed in television broadcasting I have a number of contacts in the ABC and immediately contacted a retired ABC broadcast engineer and sent some pictures. Within an hour I was awarded with an answer. The unit I have in my possession was converted as a foreighny by the head of the ABC tape department in 1975 for Slaters Sound Studio as an interim machine before the arrival of the new Otaris and it was based on Revox A77 circuits with hand made custom boards to fit in place of the tube electronics.
I have just finished rebuilding this machine and performed a few improvements to the electronics with the major modification being a separate precision linear power supply to the head preamp and record circuits. I have also replaced the playback amplifier signal path capacitors with Elna cerafines and modified the poorly designed tape cutoff switch as this unit is an early model predating the optical cutoff.
How does it sound..... magnificent with a very natural earthy analogue sound. I am sure the solid state electronics has probably devalued this unit but it is unique and probably the only solid state G36 in existence.
Life is full of surprises
