C6 (leeversrich) 1957

Leevers Rich reel to reels have been one of my favourite machines for some time, these machines are built to be very sturdy and recent, I have spoken with engineers and family involved in the leevers Rich company. The companies engineer designer started off working for Hotpoint, it's thought the ideas of heavy duty motors and cases had been implemented into these recorders, with the machines having such a heavy capstan motor, these recorder had very low wow and flutter, the heads were also ones which surpassed anything at the time though the recorders heavy mechanics did make them less user friendly when it came to editing. The Leevers Rich company had very strong links with large companies such as the BBC, these recorders were mainly used for master recordings after editing or playing pre recorded radio broadcasts, also they did find their way into the radiophonic workshop, famous for the Dr. Who theme tune (Though Leevers Rich machines were not used for that recording, Philips machines were).

This Leevers Rich is an early machine, according to the leevers family, they started producing recorders as early as the 40's, these machines has an interesting feature called Syncro-pulse, designed to be synchronised with films as most people could not afford a tape recorder and disc cutting was still widely used in the reporting age, the tape recorder had only just began in the 40's in the UK after diagrams were brought over from Germany. This recorder features the syncro-pulse though thought to be from 1957, this recorder didn't run on AC but 12V dc, suitable for portable use with cameras,

This recorder is a little ruff though its in better condition than when I brought it, it was so ruff I was going to strip it for spares but seeing how difficult Leevers Rich spares are to get and machines, I spent several days restoring the case, I need to find the plastic coating material so that I can redo the metal case.