so my olde Tascam 644 4track finally pooped out on me. i popped it open & it has a saggy belt. tried throwing a similar sized rubber band on it & that's not going to hold up, i'd be pulling it apart again in a week. luckily i found some replacement belts online. the manual doesn't say anything about belt replacement. i'm pretty good about hitting the heads with electronics grade alcohol every so often. blasted out some dust with canned air. any general tips on tape deck maintenance & belt replacement?
Industrial Music forum » Music tech forum
tape machine belt replacement
(12 posts)-
Posted 7 months ago #
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Demagnetize your head. This is important and will make noticable difference in what you hear.
Cassette trackers usually suffer from bad head alignment after awhile. Here is some info on correcting the alignment.
http://www.churchsoundcheck.com/tra.html
Check out the part concerning biasing too.Posted 7 months ago # -
awesome link! i'll look into a demagnetizer, thanks for the tips.
Posted 7 months ago # -
Also, browse through here - http://homerecording.com/bbs/general-discussions/analog-only/
There's a helpful sticky thread worth reading.
There are guys in here who are experts on the subject matter. Pretty nice people too.Not sure where to get head demagnetizers anymore. If you find one be very careful with it. Be sure to turn it on at the far side of the room from your deck. An extension cord will be of good use for this. Then slowly approach your deck to avoid wrecking the heads. Keep tapes and magnetic discs, hard drives and other sensitive media well away too.
If you have an cathode ray tube monitor or TV you can do interesting fun stuff to its screen with the demagnetizer. ;-)
Almost forgot, NEVER touch the deck with the demagnetizer!!!! Universe ending paradoxes will occur! Well at the very least you'll need new heads, and good luck finding them!
Posted 7 months ago # -
::Not sure where to get head demagnetizers anymore.::
looks like RadioShack, Fry's & Amazon carry em. i'm seeing cassette shaped ones & one that looks more like a soldering iron.
what happens when you stick it on a speaker magnet?
Posted 7 months ago # -
ummm, universe-ending paradox? IDK try it and hope the demagnetizer's field remains as it should.
Posted 7 months ago # -
so i got the belt in & it seems to be play rewind & ff properly. but track one is not getting any signal from tape. 2, 3 4 sound great. i flip tape over & the track is still there, looks like track one head is not reading? or misaligned? i'm gonna dig thru those links & see if anything relevant pops up.
Posted 6 months ago # -
looks like the most likely culprit is a loose wire from tinkering around in there. hmmm...
Posted 6 months ago # -
@metaball It may be just that. On my old Fostex X-30 I managed to pull a wire from the playback head while cleaning the transport. It broke right at the head leaving only a tiny nub to reconnect to. I managed to solder it together again - very carefully. Those wires are really fragile!
Posted 6 months ago # -
it looks like everything's enact. there's fragile looking wires everywhere on this thing so i could be missing something. line tester shows connection from track 1 wire @ the head & track one pcb channel section. any chance one track on the head itself could go out?
rationally it seems an unlikely scenario to me but i'm not seeing anything loose. maybe i need to walk away for a bit & come back later with fresh eyes & a clear head.
Posted 6 months ago # -
A head can go bad sure. If you don't have an O-Scope then find a small piezo transducer. They are used for tweeters on cheap boom boxes and also smoke detectors. Search google (or Radio Shack) for a source they aren't hard to find. You can use them to trace your audio through a circuit. Not off the head itself - that signal is extremely small and wont drive the piezo! But trace the signal from the head to the nearest amplifier op-amp and then use the piezo to trace the audio from there. If you can find audio downstream of the head then the head and wires to it are ok.
Trace your audio path with a continuity checker or whatever you have. Draw a picture as you go. What you want to do is document the route the signal takes and then check at each connection along the way for signal. This will localize where the signal is going away and rule out stuff as you go. Be methodical. And keep in mind the simple stuff always goes first. Go back to the beginning. Are you plugged into power? Is the switch on? Is the fuse ok? Does power appear on the power lines in the circuit? Always begin from the the most simple source of fault even if you think it is silly. Check all your switches on the control panel too. You'll find starting with the most obvious shit solves the problem 75% of the time.
If you get in over your head then shoot me a message here with your email or phone number:
http://www.hollowpoint9.com/contact
Then I can try to walk you through it if you think it will help.Posted 6 months ago # -
@hollowman: thanks for the insight, did some more tinkering around. i'm getting signal off track one now, but it's about half the volume of the other 3 tracks. try again tomorrow.
Posted 6 months ago #
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