Akai GX-270D Reel to Reel Tuneup for a Customer

Akai GX-270D Reel to Reel from 1977.

I don’t usually repair other people’s equipment as I have enough of my own projects, but I recently sold something to a gentleman on Facebook Marketplace and he asked if I could give his reel to reel a tuneup.

These are the types of projects I like doing because generally there isn’t anything wrong — and if there is, is it’s minor in nature.

Mind you, I’m not doing a full top to bottom, restoration recap, biasing, and everything else just some of the basics. For more time and money I could do more as I do to my own machines.

Spent about an hour and a half opening this up, cleaning it out.  Re-lubricated about 15 different places.  Changed the counter belt. Applied Deoxit to all switches pots and controls. Applied rubber restore to every piece of rubber, including the feet on the back. Checked speed with a test tape and also verified playback and record azimuth is in range.

I have an Akai GX-4000D  from the same period so it’s nice to see what the premium unit looks like here.

Mainly feather touch controls and very smooth transport now that everything has been regreased and cleaned.

While there could be other issues in the future, such as transistors that start to fail and capacitors that go bad, in general, this has a lot of life ahead because it’s got a good solid baseline today and I’ve addressed a lot of things that needed good maintenance and attention.