Nagra V upgrade

[Bivouac]

Well three months of designing and fabricating an upgrade for my Nagra V. Long article to follow later but here is an early taste of it.

 

Here's what it looked like before: https://www.nagraaudio.com/product/nagra-v/

 

Here's what I did:

Swapped the HDD with a CF card and got rid of the proprietary battery. Significant weight savings (1kg) and slimmer, more flexibility to use modern batteries and  modern recording medium. So far, I have tried three different brands/capacities of CF card (Transcend, Sandisk, Kingston) and all work even at 96/24 for 30+ minutes.

 

Used Fusion to draw and CNC a new lid, handle, and 'backpack'.

 

Still waiting for Nagra to give me the password to unlock the Twin Drive option after which I will install a second CF card reader inside the unit and use its 'auto copy' function after every recording.

 

Finally putting it through its paces today, battery life, making new cables, and recording.

 

Thinking of selling kits.

 

Would love to hear your thoughts about this project.

 

 

 

 

[Derek H]

Wow looks amazing! Nice work. Is there any internal battery now or do you just power it externally?

[Bivouac]

Thanks! I just power it externally now. Plenty of choices with longer lasting modern batteries. I have either a v-mount belt clip or a small pouch on a belt. Had to design a backpack so that it could stand on its own like in original design. 

 

[The Immoral Mr Teas]

真好看 ！

Normally I'd think twice about a redesign for a Nagra, but if I had a V I'd definitely be looking to do just this to it. Very nice work indeed. I'll look forward to the write up.

 

Jez