Russian reel to reel

[vinylfreak]

Hi,
As it was my 66th birthday yesterday i decided to treat myself to another reel to reel.
This one is a Soviet era Olimp 004.
What a great sounding machine. Packed with features and weighs a ton.
I opened it up this morning to have a nose inside and it is all modular build.
The recording and playback is superb even at the slower speed. There is one fault which is the recording level meter isnt registering when recording but this is only a minor problem.
Any way here is a picture of it working.
Enjoy,
Kevin(vinylfreak)
P.S. If anybody knows who could translate part of the instruction manual please let me know.



                                                             

[nigel]

Belated Happy Birthday, Kevin   

Looks like a nice machine - enjoy 

[Andr039]

hi Kevin
i had another one (Орбита 106) in my childhood and that was PITA. Quality of some caps were terrible and twice a year i phoned a guy who knew which one should be changed again. Unfortunately, it looks like the sourse of those caps was the same so a half a year later i phoned him again. 
But this model (Олимп) counts as one of the best within Russian reel to reel models. But caps has to be changed! 
i may look at the manual. However i don't know special terms from this field, so the quality of my translation may be quite low 
best,

[rfgumby]

Fun Birthday gift.  Have a great time playing with and enjoying it!

[JayM481]

Nice looking machine! What era is it from? It looks fairly modern.

Is it OK to run with mis-matched reels? I know some decks can do that, but many can't handle the different inertia of different diameter reels.

[Kent T]

Appears to be ideally suited for using Red Tape! Beautiful and appears to be ReVox A 700 inspired.

[haydn]

Appears to be ideally suited for using Red Tape! 

Ah, an ex-Government machine then Kent??

[vinylfreak]

Hi all, Apparently this machine was made between 1986 and 1988 and was made for the high end russian domestic market'
As for running tape reels of differing sizes is no problem for this recorder as the slider control on the far left is a tape tension adjustment for the feed reel the takeup reel will work for any size reel. I have now found a russian speaker who will translate the pages i need doing.
Kevin
P.S. I forgot to add this deck wieghs in at around 27Kg a monster.

[JayM481]

I guess some Party bosses would have got those. I'm not picturing the mid-late '80s USSR has having much of a "market" otherwise. 

[OsteSpiser]

I'm not picturing the mid-late '80s USSR has having much of a "market" otherwise. 

  ..surveillance??  .. and surely you need top-quality recording equipment to demonstrate/export
superior Soviet culture to the decadent west 

-kristian

[dauphine]

..surveillance??  .. and surely you need top-quality recording equipment to demonstrate/export
superior Soviet culture to the decadent west 

-kristian

Look again. I 'spy' a micro video camera retractable lens to the right of that green lcd display. It activates when 'play' is pressed

Impressive monster!

andre

[vinylfreak]

Hi Andre,
Forunately that is not a micro video recorder it is a button when pressed activates the autostop which works thus. If you have recorded only half a reel of tape
reset the counter to zero then press the button when you have finished recording and rewind it will then stop at zero so you can start the playback quite handy.
Kevin