Revox A-77HS
A high-speed A77 variant that turns up in studio equipment lists more often than in living rooms — the deck that became a working tool rather than a collector's ornament.
Overview
The documentation on the A-77HS is fragmentary, and it's worth being honest about that up front: there is no surviving spec sheet in the archive, no original price, and no confirmed production years. What the period record does show, however, is a machine that spent its working life inside studios rather than on hi-fi shelves. The A-77HS appears repeatedly in studio equipment inventories from the late 1970s and early 1980s, almost always listed as a two-track machine alongside multitrack recorders and mixing consoles.
Mix (October 1980, p.36) listed a Revox A-77HS two-track among the tape recorders at DB Sound Studios in Silver Spring, Maryland, alongside a Tascam 80-8 eight-track and an Otan 50 50 two-track. The studio directory in the March 1980 issue carried the A-77HS in the equipment lists at Doctor Sound in San Diego and 1PM Recording Studios in Whittier, California. That's a pattern worth noting: three separate American studios, in a single issue of a trade magazine, all running the same Revox as their two-track. Whatever else the HS was, it was a standard working deck.
The "HS" designation refers to high speed, and the clearest period evidence comes from the UK distributor's advertising. Studio Sound (August 1973, p.41) ran a table for the "REVOX HS77" that laid out the model range by speed: the standard A77 at 3¾ and 7½ ips, the HS77 at 7½ and 15 ips, a Dolby version, and a VHS77 at 15 and 30 ips. The HS77 was pitched squarely at professional users — the copy states the high-speed Revox was "firmly established as standard equipment in the majority of London Theatres, Local Radio Stations, National Broadcasting Companies and Recording Studios." Half-track HS77 units were listed as available immediately; full-track versions carried a seven-day delivery. Sel-Sync was an additional option.
That advertising is marketing copy, not an independent verdict, but the studio listings corroborate the claim. A two-track quarter-inch machine running 15 ips was the standard mixdown and mastering format of the era, and the A-77HS was evidently one of the decks studios reached for. The Studio Sound classifieds tell the same story from the other direction: an August 1977 private sale offered a "Revox A77HS, Custom Mixer, AKG C451 mikes, KLH speakers, all accessories" as a complete recording package for £950 — a working rig being sold as a unit, not a single component pulled from a hi-fi stack.
Because the fact sheet carries no verified specifications, owners and prospective buyers should treat any numbers encountered elsewhere with caution. The A77 family is well documented, but the HS variant's specific speed configuration, track format, and performance figures are not confirmed by the sources in this archive. The Studio Sound table is the most direct evidence available, and it should be read as a distributor's listing rather than a manufacturer's specification. Anyone evaluating a unit should verify the head configuration and speed set on the actual machine — HS decks were sold in full-track, half-track, and Sel-Sync variants, and the configurations were not interchangeable.
What can be said with confidence is that the A-77HS belongs to the A77 lineage, and that lineage is the reason these decks still command attention. The A77 is widely regarded as the most popular high-end reel-to-reel recorder ever made, and the HS was its professional-facing branch. The trade-off is that a studio deck has usually lived a studio life — hundreds of hours on the heads, and a service history that may or may not have followed it into retirement. The archive has no current market data for the HS specifically, so pricing should be treated as an open question rather than a benchmark.
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