SkyFi Audio – Curators of Vintage Audio Gear. No mid-fi, no gimmicks, no junk. Each piece of equipment is cosmetically restored and fully tested in our well-equipped lab by an engineer with 30+ years of experience in the HiFi world. Through our sister company, which is an authorized dealer for McIntosh, Audio Research, Sonus Faber, ClearAudio, Project, and Sony ES, we have access to OEM parts, service, and support. This special Crown vintage reel to reel machine came to us from a serious collector who gathered nothing but the best. The CX844 in its custom wooden cabinet is simply stunning to look and and operate. This specific example was actually painstakingly hand-built for our client from NOS (New Old Stock) official Crown Audio parts. All to a great cost and investment in time. This is also a 4 Track version capable of high speed. It also includes a Crown D-40 amplifier mounted at the bottom which could make this a stand alone piece. You can check out that unit via the video below. Really stunning to look at even when it’s just sitting looking pretty. The SkyFi Testing Process for Tape Decks and Reel to Reel Machines. First steps are performed to determine if the unit is a candidate for our full restoration process or if its just in need of a light service. We first do a. Basic functionality test to ensure proper playback fast forward and rewind. We look for smooth operation of the motors, transport engagement and associated rolling parts. We then do an internal physical inspection to ensure the belts and rubber consumable parts are up to spec. Internal components are checked to make sure that there are no signs of heat stress or damage particularly in the power supply section. Capacitors are checked for telltale signs of predictive failure including bulging, shrunken wrappers, or physical leakage. We also inspect the PCBs for discoloration from resistors or transistors that may have been running hot. On vintage units we often spot check select capacitors for value and ESR. A light service will involve replacement of belts and rollers, external cleaning of heads, mechanism and boards and basic record and playback tests. A full restoration will often include disassembly of the drive system and replacement of all consumable and wearable parts including pinch rollers, belts, brakes, bearings. We then clean lubricate and re-assembly the drive and perform basic mechanical alignment to ensure proper tape path and head alignment. Final calibration will involved adjustment of playback erase and record heads and optimization of the bias for a specific tape type. We do this with the aid of a Soundtech 1510A tape deck analyzer and a Nakamichi T100 unit and reference calibration tapes. Final listening tests are done while monitoring with our reference Grado HP1 headphones and a variety of factory and custom reference recordings. We find that there is no better system for critical listening on tapes than the headphones specially when comparing a live feed to a recorded feed. If we don’t have the original manufacture’s packaging, we use heavy duty double-ply corrugated boxes with custom made to your item SealedAir Instapak expanding foam custom inserts. In many cases this has proven to be better than the original packaging! We also use high quality fiber reinforced tape to seal our packages. We have too many items for sale and it is nearly impossible to keep track of offers outside of the official system. Please understand we have no control over this. This item is in the category “Consumer Electronics\Vintage Electronics\Vintage Audio & Video\Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders”. The seller is “skyfiaudio” and is located in this country: US. This item can be shipped to United States.

• Brand: Crown
• Type: Tape Recorder
• Model: CX844
• MPN: CX844
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States