Akai SS-30

A model number in the archive's Akai index with nothing behind it, and a name that belongs to somebody else's instrument.

Overview

The Akai SS-30 is listed here as a known model designation, and that is all that can be verified. The research file is empty. No production years, no original price, no specifications, no circuit description, no cabinet details, no owner reports, no market data. Anyone holding a service manual, an owner's manual, or a period Akai catalog page with this number printed on it has something the archive does not.

There is a naming collision that will mislead anyone searching period sources. The "SS-30" or "SS30" designation turns up in late-1970s print attached to a completely different instrument - a Yamaha string machine, reviewed by Tom Stock in Beat Instrumental and priced at £760 including VAT. That documentation describes a mock-rosewood orchestral keyboard with separate cello and violin sections, a variable keyboard split ranging from one octave to two, delayed vibrato, and a stereo output splitting the cello and violin voices from the piano and clavichord voices. None of it concerns an Akai product. The shared number is coincidence. Don't carry any of that review's details across to this entry.

Period Akai material in the review corpus doesn't help pin down the SS-30 either. It does show what the company was selling in the years the designation might date from. High-Fidelity (October 1967, p.143) described the Akai Model X-IV tape recorder - cross-field head, 4-track 4-speed stereo/mono recording and playback, 4-watt output, 40 to 20,000 cps response, and 11½ pounds without battery. An Audio (March 1978, p.26) advertisement for Akai's glass-and-crystal ferrite GX head pitched a cassette deck at $945. Those are tape machines, not an SS-30. The archive cites that material only to show what was searched and what came back empty.

Until a primary document naming the Akai SS-30 surfaces, this page stays short on purpose. A minimal accurate entry beats a padded one assembled from guesses, and the SS-30 is the clearest case for that rule in the Akai index.

eBay Listings

Vintage pair AKAI SS-30 Reel to Reel Tape Player SPEAKERS SY

$106

Vintage AKAI SS-30 Bookshelf Speakers Pair Tested Working Ma

$38.00

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Related Models

• Akai AA-6200 (1975)
• Akai AA-R30 (1978)
• Akai AM-U-1 (1975)
• Akai AP-206 (1978–1980)
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• Braun AUDIO-1 (1965)
• Braun AUDIO-250 (1965)
• Magnavox Component Systems (1972)
• Acoustic Research AR (1967-1976)
• Acoustic Research 11