The Studer A-827 is a GREAT machine...
The transport is killer, the audio electronics well designed
and overall it's perhaps the best machine Studer ever built.
Note that Studer sold the last of their 'Gold Edition' A-827's
in December of 2007 - with warrenty!
In theory the A-827 will be supported by "Audiohouse" in Switzerland only thru 2008.
Studer does NOT support any Studer Tape Recorder in any way now !!!
But we don't know how 'deep' that support will be from 'Audiohouse"....
will they sell component parts or just complete boards (at a tremendously high cost)??
After 2008 no one knows what will happen to Studer Tape Machine Parts
so order spare parts for your A-827 NOW before it's too late !!!!
I believe there will be parts available for years to come, but go ahead and
get a couple transport switches and such so you have them on hand.
jump here to Audiohouse for Studer parts Here are some helpful tips I've found over the past years working on Studer A-827 machines...
First off, there are a number of EPROMs inside the machine, and these
can and will go bad - causing a complete machine failure.
Somehow, there was a flaw in the Studer 'self-test' programming, so if one
particular EPROM fails, the 'self-test' can go through it's entire cycle
and finish up telling you that the machine is in perfect condition - even
though you can't get the transport to do anything....
So if this happens to you, it's likely one of the EPROMs.
It could be other things as well, but the first step is to swap out
the EPROMs so replace all of them... if you're lucky that will solve the problem.
Personally, if I owned a A-827, I'd have someone copy the EPROMs in my
machine as a Back-up set, and have them around just in case.
Buying a new set of EPROMs is costly, but depending on which version of
software you have (the programs are stored in the EPROMs)
you may want to buy a new set of latest EPROMs and just replace them now.
Note that a upgrade of your EPROMs is dependent on the software version
you currently have AND the hardware...
EPROMs are not interchangable between the two basic versions of the A-827.
make a copy of your machine's EPROM set as a back-up...
We can make a back-up EPROM set of your machine's EPROMs for you...
Cost runs $ 85 - 150 depending on how many EPROMs you send to be copied.
Note there are EPROMs inside the Autolocator !!!
or you can buy a set of the latest EPROM's for your machine from AudioHouse.ch (very costly !!)
Replace your RAM Back-Up Battery EVERY 5 YEARS
If the battery goes dead, you will lose ALL stored prameters....
all Audio alignments, all Transport alignments, and possibly get wierd
stuff happening....
WARNING: when you replace your batteries ALL previously stored
alignment data will be lost - so you will have to realign your machine.
Smart thing is to write down all the various stored parameters - both
transport alignment and audio alignment data.... then re-enter the same data
once you've finished replacing the batteries. Note that the original Factory settings
will be loaded into the machine, but not your own settings.
Next I gotta tell you that I'm seeing a lot of A-827 and A-820 machines
with power supplies that are now malfunctioning. All the power
supplies in these machines are 'switching' power supplies, meaning they are EXTREEMLY
DIFFICULT to repair. I've had to repair 4 power supplies in the last 6 months,
and these are pretty dang new machines. Often the failures are due to the Owners
leaving the machines on for 24 hours a day.... causing the caps to go bad, transistors and FETs
to fail, the MOSFETs to blow up... and so on...
If you own a A-827 or a A-820 DO NOT LEAVE THEM 'ON' 24 hours a day !!!
Plus saddly the Power Transformers in the Studer A-827 and A-820 machines seem to be
under-built, since I've seen a few failures where a power transformer shorts out
and blows fuses. These cost about $ 1,400 each, plus shipping....
yet another reason NOT to leave the machine 'On' 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If you will not be using the machine for a while, turn her 'Off'.
Next you want to make sure that you do NOT set the wind or play tensions too high...
use the basic specs for tension given in the manual and have the tensions checked
once in a while. Tensions set too high can force the machine into oscillation in the wind modes
Make sure you WRITE down the tensions settings in the manual!! Engineers WILL change
the tension settings and they will not mention it to you... I've seen this happen too many times.
Also I've been seeing a bunch of A-820's and A-827's that have a huge amount of dirt, dust and so on
under the tranport. You should be cleaning this out at least once a year!
From time to time - say once a year - lift the transport up and remove the connectors one at a time,
spray clean the sockets and press the connectors firmly back into their sockets....
(of course with the machine turned off !!!)
Then after all the connectors have been cleaned,
you MUST test ALL the audio and transport functions!!!
by the way I use "LPS-1 Greesless Lubricant" as my spray-cleaner of choice
Next you need to learn the 'feel' of the transport control buttons - they have a tendency to go bad now and then, and you need to know when one is about to fail... there should be a good solid 'click' to the button, and it should bounce back after being pressed.
Note that the A-827 is a micro-processor controlled machine....
it's basically a computer, actually it's 4 CPUs as I recall, but it's getting OLD...
it's a 10 year old computer now, and chips do fail, EPROMs loose their memory, and strange things can start to happen.
Make a list of the various chips in the control system, and make sure that you have a couple chips of each kind sitting around... some you may find hard to find, but it's better to try and find them now, then when the machine's not working... some chips will take hours of searching to find, but do it now!!
Studer does NOT service the A-827 machine at all.... a company called "Audiohouse" in Switzerland does.
I've heard they will 'support' the A-827 only until the end of 2008
(that's a far cry from what I heard a couple years ago!!!!)
from now on it's hit or miss, so start getting parts right away!!!
click here for Service Maintenance Status (in pdf form) Note that the cost of Studer heads is high - too high for most studios to afford to replace heads once they're gone....
so make sure that the tape lifters are pushing the tape away from the heads in wind modes!!
Remember that in the 'auto-mute' mode, you will NOT hear the repro system in the fast-wind modes....
meaning that if the lifters were allowing the tape to touch the heads, you would never hear it !!!
So physically check the lifters, or undo the 'auto-mute' and listen in the wind modes.
Order at least 1 replacement transport switch for the main deck
and the Remote NOW before Audiohouse runs out of them!!!
Finally I just ran into a machine that was shutting down the transport in the WIND modes randomly.
This turned out to happen ONLY when the studio was using tape with leader in it - whenever the leader passed the guides and rollers it threw the machine's
tensions out of tolerance and the machine would coast to a stop.
The only way to re-start the transport was to turn the unit Off and back On...
This fault was caused by over-sized and poorly cut leader tape.
So if you have this happen to you, just remove the leader tape
on the reel you're working with - or find better quality leader tape.
The ERROR message caused by this was wierd -
Something like "Locator Range Error"
which goes to show you how 'good' the error detection is in the A-827..