AKAI GX-650D

[MAG Reel To Reel]

Hello

This is very rare AKAI *reelspin*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpkzwPzzHaw

[westgate]

hello. welcome to T.H.
are you asking a question about the akai deck? or?

here is a link to a google page of videos of the deck.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&source=hp&q=AKAI+GX-650D+info&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=ONj1SoGnIoOj8Aatu6jzCQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CA4QqwQwAA#

[westgate]

from the website of SLBender (http://slbender.exactpages.com/akai6.html), scroll down a bit (pic got lost)-

"Here is a picture of an early 1970's vintage GX Series unit the GX-650D, which is a very interesting, and unique set. Despite the higher numerical moidel number, it is actually one of the earlier Series 600 sets. It was perhaps the first to incorporate the Akai Servo-Controlled Capstan Motor.

It features three speeds, and I believe it was the only set in the GX Series to do so. Now about that Servo Control... it used a huge external servo-sensing "head" which happened to look quite a bit like one of the prior generation pre-GX permalloy playback heads. Hey, maybe Akai had thousands of those parts left over, and when they needed something to do with them... instead of making another "older style" set, they designed the new servo-controlled motor system and re-used the older heads as the servo-feedback pickup... In addition, what might seem like an over design, or an oxymoron... Akai also used a belt drive from the Servo-Controlled Motor Rotor to power the dual capstans. While this should result in very good wow and flutter, at least in theory, it does mean a lot of extra precision parts and components. These extra parts and components causing many additional and varied eigenodes of flutter components, at various frequencies and spectrum.

So did Akai improve things, or make it worse with this Servo-motor and belt drive / dual capstan design ? That is very, very difficult to tell, without doing months of precise measurements, but suffice it to say, all of the later Akai Series 600 sets ( GX-630D, GX-635D, GX-636, GX-646, GX-747, etc. ) used a single capstan, and a direct drive servo-motor - where the motor rotor is the capstan shaft. I wonder how many people were on that GX-650D design team ??? Still, the GX-650D is an interesting older GX Series set, on its own terms."

[westgate]

and a link to some myspace pix. (i'm not registered-you may have to.?)
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=127175583&albumId=2060296