What can one say about what is probably the most successful and long lived portable professional tape recorder ever made? Certainly the 'Nagra' was a legend in its own lifetime, and remains an object lesson in quality of engineering together with remarkably simple and unpretentious functionality. Beautifully made and until just a few years ago just about every film and television programme produced had its sound recorded on one of these impeccable machines.
Nagra portable film sound recorders similar to the above machine became the de facto industry standard for more than a quarter of a century, and were only gradually edged out of use in the last few years by firstly; compact R-DAT recorders, and now by various short-lived and almost disposable file based devices. As with professional video, the new technology seems to be doing anything but establishing any industry certainly or commonality of format.
The Nagra IV-S shown is an immaculate late time code machine type NQS-TCC, which might indeed be still available new from the factory, and I wish it was part of my own collection...
The June 1989 Audio and Video Product Line catalogue describes it thus:
'The NAGRA IV-S is a portable self contained 6.35mm (1/4") tape stereo recorder designed for high quality musical recording, cinema and television applications. It has three speeds: 38, 19 and 9.5 cm/s (15, 7 1/2 and 3 3/4 ips) NAB or CCIR, plus NAGRAMASTER (38 cm/s only / 15ips) equalizations. The machine has two microphone inputs with three pin XLR connectors, switchable between dynamic, "T" or Phantom powering, with phase check, and left channel phase reverse switch, or two current line inputs.
It also features a NAGRALIN antidistortion system, high pass filters for recording or replay, and a switchable automatic level control and limiter. Built-in loudspeaker, and headphone output and reference signal generator. The machine can be fitted with a NAGRASYNC F.M. 50/60Hz pilot system or the SMPTE/EBU centre-track time code system, including a built-in time code generator, for synchronizing. Other accessories are available for particular applications.'
Left side of the Nagra IV-S, containing the various noise-reduction and line inputs and outputs, together with the XLR microphone inputs and their powering mode and attenuator switches. One of the many nice touches are the slotted carry-strap 'keepers' (extreme left).
And if you ever wanted to know what the underside of a Nagra IV-S looked like... (The rectangular door is the simply fastened battery cover, which can, if you don't keep hold of it, just fall on to the floor.)
Above is the tape head area, moving from left to right we have; the dual-gap ferrite erase head, the time code record/replay head, the audio record head and finally the audio playback head. In this photograph the tape path has been opened for lacing and the hinged audio head screening shields are folded down. One might like to appreciate the substantial tape guides and the massive stroboscopicaly marked flutter idler wheel. Every component looks simple, honest and beautifully engineered. This version of the machine uses a later type of tape guide which have a slightly textured though very hard white ceramic face plate, together with (unique?) ruby rod end stones.
Apparently the ceramic face plates replaced solid polished slices of synthetic ruby used in the previous version of these guides because it tended to cause a slight stiction ?? or judder effect with the tape which could increase scrape flutter. Visible just in front of the central time code record/replay head is the unique Nagra azimuth adjusting device. This consists of a pair of very slightly wedged disks sandwiched under each record and play head, one was fixed to the deck plate and the other had a geared circumference. To adjust the head azimuth one just turned a small socket headed gear wheel at the front of the head with an Allen key, and this rotates the two wedges against each other, thus rocking the head back and forth. As far as I am aware this system was fitted to all Nagra portables, though can't recall if it was used on the T-Audio.