Akai GX-747 Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder.
The model was partly made in Bryce and in Vue Studio with boolean techniques. Everything was then exported to OBJ and brought together in Daz Studio. The textures were created in Photoshop and applied to the parts.
Many people believe that the Akai GX-747 and its successor the GX-747dbX were the finest reel-to-reel decks ever produced by Akai, or any one else for that matter (others insist it was Akai s Pro 1000). It was extremely well made and utilized the evolving technology of its predecessors.
Superficially, the GX-747 looks like an advanced version of the GX-646, with all of the functions of the latter and then some. As it was a 4 track machine, it did not feature 15 IPS which many of the competition could offer at the time. It featured six heads, four of them being of the Akai GX (glass-crystal) type one each for forward record, forward playback, reverse record and reverse playback. The heads were arranged along with the two erase heads in the head block in perfect symmetry, resulting in an accurate, stable tape path with absolutely no contact error.
Three independent motors drove the capstan, supply reel and take-up reel. The extremely stable AC servo capstan motor maintained perfect speed at all times, while keeping wow & flutter to a negligible level. Motorized tension arms made tape threading easy. During fast forward or rewind, they automatically sensed and corrected for tape slack or potential snagging; and at the end of the tape, they opened automatically to facilitate tape loading.
Feather-touch, microcomputer controls allowed effortless transport operation. Tape travel direction was verified by a lighted indicator. Direct mode changes between any two transport functions were possible so that one could jump quickly from one to the other without fear of damage to the tape or transport.
A bright, 24-segment LED bar graph with 1 second peak hold made record level monitoring extremely easy. Akai produced 5 variations of the 747, silver and black with the following options depending on the time of production- VU or LED meters and DBX.
