Nagra IV-S interior

Undo two captive screws and the whole machine opens up into two halves.
Disconnect a multiway connector and you can seperate tape deck and
electronics completely. Indeed years ago one could buy a Nagra tape deck on
its own and fit your own electronics. (This was done to my knowledge by
PAG with their film recorders - hi Glyn!) The case seems to consist of an
upper and lower drawn alloy box, with various flat anodic 'engraved' panels
fixed to the sides. Component quality as one would expect seems to be good
and the whole machine exudes a no-nosense funcionality.

This is very much a hand-made and wired machine. (You can tell that the PCB's were
wired by hand by the lack of solder mask and the nice clean tracks.) It also looks in
comparison to some other portable recorders relativly straight forward to work on.
The machine has a simple and uncomplicated mother board into which vertical sets
of sub-borads are plugged into.

This is the main function switch area and well shows the simple down-to-earth
construction approach.

Here we are looking at the underside of the tape pransport. The machine uses
a single DC servo motor with optical tachometer. This drives the capstan
directly and the reels via two large rubber (?) belts and slipping clutches.

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