Akai GX-F95

Last stand for ultra-quality by partly Mitsubishi-operated Akai.

The GX-F95 is the culmination of the earlier GX-F91 : outside a massive closed shell like the Pioneer CT-A1, and, inside, a typically early 80s mess of cables and somewhat undistinguished assembly of parts powered by a sizeable transformer, Canon auxiliary motors and an ALPS BLM-100 drive.

All the modern 1981 features are packed behind a very well designed front : GX3 heads, 2-motor drive, "computer control" for status/settings memory, digital tape counter, auto-tape-type set, 2x 24-segment FL meters with1s peak-hold and Dolby/MPX filters.

GX3 heads (or "Super GX") are normal GX (glass+ferrite) assembled differently with special alloys, a 4µ gap (rec) and 1µ gap (play). The capstan motor relies on a brushless Quartz DD with 3-phase-full-wave position detection with a Hall element. The rec/play amps are full DC with Dual-Fets.

Two cassette doors were available (theoretically) : the aluminium blank well-known one and a transparent acryl one which I've never seen for real. The black version (F95BL) is rather rare.

The auto-tuning system does what others were doing then (CT-A9, DR-M4, TC-FX1010 etc) in oh-so-slightly different manner : check tape formulation and adjust bias / eq / levels. Here it is done separately for the left and right channels, twice for each. And display the result througha lot of bright LEDs :)
Of all the features, that part is the one which generally has gone bust nowadays.

I surmise that, build-quality-wise, the F95 didn't end in the super-extra-monster-league the engineers probably wished for it - just to go tackle bestsellers of the time such as the Nakamichi 1000ZXL or, later, the DRAGON or Sony TC-K777ES.
But the Mitsubishi Bank was after all making sure since 1979 Akai didn't go under the red line...


Nudies aplenty here.