Tascam MS-16 Problems

C

Chip Whitley

New member
Hi all, I've been trying to get a couple of kinks worked out of my newly acquired tascam MS-16. I was chatting with Miroslav about it in another thread but am still chasing some things, hoping you lot can help me out! I've taken a couple of videos to try and show as best as possible the problems I am experiencing, hopefully they can help.

So I drove about 850 miles to pick this MS-16 and a JH-110 up, I am "going for it" and starting my own recording studio. I previously had another MS-16 and an Otari MTR-10 halftrack that I traded in with a couple of other things to a fella for this MS-16 and MCI. I picked the machines up in Canada, they played back fine, the guy tested them and spec'd them out(he's a tech it's what he does so I am trusting him.) I got frequency response graphs from him showing the machine pretty damn flat from 20-20, and pictures of the VU's while running the tones through it. Long story somewhat shorter, I get home and am having these problems you'll see in the videos below. I am hoping and guessing it is all due to travel. After being home a week or so and having no luck trying to troubleshoot these problems myself, I called Randy Blevins and asked if he knew any Tascam guys. He did, and gave me the number of a fella called Don Cruise. After talking with him he said the best way to check and adjust tension on these machines(especially as you're not going to get it to factory specs per the manual(tip of the hat to Miro)) is to record a 10k tone to the tape and monitor from the repro head. He said to adjust the tension until the needle stops jittering around, and when you're there, you're home! Well, I can't get that to happen for some reason. Using the pots that are under the 'POWER' button I adjusted the 'REPRO' supply tension and the take up tension, at one point having them maxed out and this didn't fix my problem trying to enter PLAY from STOP or just to get the VU meters to stand still. When they I am monitoring the INPUT, needles and everything are fine, obviously. Switching to the repro will give me a slight oscillation of the tone that you should be able to hear on the video.


^this video is just to show how the tension arms distribute when first entering RWD or FWD mode.


^This video shows the trouble entering 'PLAY' mode from 'STOP' mode. I RWD the tape a couple of seconds and hit Play immediately to get the tape to play.
at 00:15 I enter Record mode, recording a 10k tone generated from my Soundcraft Ghost Console. From 00:19 to 00:35 I am monitoring off the 'REPRO' head and showing the VU meters during this process.

00:36 I switch my monitor source from 'REPRO' to 'INPUT'. You can not only see the difference on the VU, you can hear the oscillation of the frequency either stop, or minimize by quite a lot.

00:40 to 00:50 I am displaying the VU meters during the 'INPUT' head monitoring.




^This is the deck playing back a 1k tone in 'REPRO' mode. Tracks 6 & 14 are much different than the remaining tracks due to a fader being out of position on the console.


^This is a closer look at the tension arms when trying to enter 'PLAY' mode from 'STOP'.


Despite what all this may look like, I don't believe myself to be a complete dunce, but this I cannot figure out. I am usually able to figure things out but I am scared to proceed from here because I have no one around(locally/my area) that I can have over for questions or to show me anything. I would hate to do something and ruin the machine right away, throw it so far out of spec that I would have to pay for a tech to travel here or send the deck to someone, or mis-calibrate it just so that it works but is slowly ruining something and I'll have no idea until it's too late.

If anyone on here can help me out I would greatly appreciate it, so much so that if it fixes the problem I'll send you money if you want!(when I start making it, trying to get this bird off the ground still :facepalm: )

Thanks any and all. If you need more information or perhaps a video or whatever please let me know and I will do so post haste.
 
TBH...looking at the second video where you show the meters during REPRO playback...what is it about them that you're equating with tension issues...?
The only meter that was dancing a bit much was channel 16...all your other meters looked fine to me. If you're talking about the minor "floating" that they do...not sure that's caused by actual tension issues...more like basic alignment and/or electronics calibration or just the tape.
They are not going to be rock-steady like what you see when monitoring the input.

See if you can take note of one meter...where and how much it "dances" and at the time it happens.
Rewind and play it back a few times and again, note if it's always happening the exact same amount in the exact same place on the tape/timer.
If it is...that's not tension, IMO...that's just how the signal was recorded.
If it's always moving by a different amount and at a different place on the tape/timer...then I would say it's random and it's mechanical.

Apart from the Stop/Play issue...have you done any calibration/alignment setup yet with the deck?
I mean, you can still do that with the Stop/Play issue...and just see where the machine ends up after the setup.

I'm also not sure why/how the ride back would have created the Stop/Play issue if it really wasn't there when you checked it at the seller's place.
You would have had to really bang it quite hard...I mean quite hard to nock something out internally...or to actually hit the transport area while loading/unloading.
Any chance he was able to hide/mask that issue...or did you actually try out the machine with your hands on the controls?

Also...if you post more videos...make them longer and a little steadier with the camera...and a more complete view of the transport and/or meters. :)
 
All very good points, Miro.

The other thing to consider about the steadiness at 10K is at 10K in my experience you start to get into a frequency range where sustained tones on adjacent tracks will start to effect each other, sometimes causing levels to vary. What happens if you do just one track or every other track? And regardless there is likely to be *some* variation in level at higher frequencies. Is this MS-16 behaving significantly different than the one you had before?

And I’m not questioning the seller’s/tech’s advice/suggestions/methodologies, but have you considered setting up your transport and tensions according to the manual using a Tentelometer? I have found, from my own experience, it is often very helpful to step through the transport adjustments as they are laid out in the manual and get a machine to baseline. Once it’s running right then it seems to be helpful or beneficial to use alternate procedures to dial in further or otherwise maintain a specific facet of the setup.

Maybe I’m just missing what the problem is...that’s not unlikely...but I’m struggling to see the problems in the videos.
 
Watched the videos again and I think you need to setup all your tensions...fast wind and play. In fast wind it’s supposed to be higher tension initially and then relax a bit after it gets up to speed. And what the seller/tech is talking about with his/her method I *think* has to do with HF drop-off...it’s one way to set tensions to achieve minimal tension while maintaining adequate tape-to-head contact. As you decrease tension and reach the point of too little tension the first thing that’s going to go is your HF response. So you can play back 10K or higher tone and slowly decrease tension while monitoring the repro level and when it starts to drop you’ve reached the floor, then bring some tension back in to reestablish good level. That make sense? But I would do this with a cal tape and not while tracking tone and monitoring off the repro head...when you do that you are going to see not only level variations from the record process but also from the play process. It’s always going to look worse...and then consider the higher frequency you go the harder it is to get rock steady playback. And then consider its test tone...not real-world content. TBH your meters, for 10K tone reproduced from a recording, look pretty damn good. My advice: get out your Tentelometer and setup your fast wind tensions and then play tension (and there’s holdback and takeup tensions to set there right?), and then once set, get out your cal tape and playback the 10K tone and dial in the holdback play tension using the HF drop-off method if you want.
 
Thanks for all the info and replies. The only real "wrong" thing was the failure to playback from stop position. About the meters reproducing the tone, I should've stated that I was wondering if that was normal playback or not? I've never done that procedure and was instructed to look for them to stop jittering which I was unsure if that was or not. Unfortunately I don't have a tentelometer and they seem quite difficult to get hands on. I don't even have a test tape yet as I am waiting to get that too. Thanks for the tip about adjacent tracks. I did run the tones on just one track(trk 2) with similar results. Good to know that the playback looks good for a 10k tone as I was kinda worried if that looked problematic or not. Thanks again for your replies!
 
The STOP to PLAY issue...don’t immediately assume it’s a tape tension issue. Maybe it is, but maybe you have a sticky solenoid cushion and the brakes are slow to release...could be other things we aren’t thinking of too, but that’s exactly why it’s inportant to step through the transport adjust/setup procedures as laid out in the manual. They’re in the order they’re in for a reason.

BTW there’s Tentelometer on eBay right now.
 
The trim pots under that little panel are not used to set tensions. Per the manual, they are used to set the initial tension arm positions. The tension is set by the position of the spring terminator under the faceplate. Messing with the adjustments under the panel can just screw things up things worse. If the tension arm on the right side is swinging too far-can't see the video-you could have a broken spring on the right side-there are two-,brakes not set up right,missing the "flash" voltage from the power supply,(35 volts applied to the reel motor for 300 ms then ramps down to 15 volts).
 
Hi everybody, I figured I hadn't bothered anyone with this same issue for a while, and I still have not made any progress but I do have a video now with the front panel removed showing my problem.


YouTube

I still can't locate the issue, I ran the tension adjustment from the manual but that did not fix my issue. Curiously enough in doing this adjustment I discovered that after I enter the 'EDIT' mode and then press stop to exit edit mode, the deck will playback fine - as normal everytime until about 3-4 minutes at the end of the tape. All I am looking to happen is for the machine to play when I hit play. if the remote had the EDIT button on it, I could just hit edit and stop prior to everytime I hit play.

So I'm just curious if any MS16 experts are able to spot anything mechanically happening thast should not be? It looks to me that the take-up side tension arm jumps further than the supply side arm on the failed PLAY attempts at the beginning. I don't know if that's normal or not. Maybe the spring on the take up side is weak, or not positioned correctly? There is nail polish or some marking that seems to indicate everything is where it should be. Thanks to any and all
 
Chip Whitley said:
So I'm just curious if any MS16 experts are able to spot anything mechanically happening thast should not be?
Click to expand...

I'm no expert...but is it possible for you to do more than 19 seconds of video...and also go in closer so you can see the mechanical action and what you are pressing...?
There's just not much to be gleaned from that video.
 
Hello,
Sorry to revive this year old thread but I was wondering if you've managed to fix your problem? If so, how did you fix it?
EDIT-just realizing I've been looking at the dates wrong (mm-dd-yy instead of ) and this thread is not at all old. Sorry!


If not, did you try adjusting the tension arm positions and end sensor according to section 7-5-4 of the manual? It definitely seems that the tension arms are too loose and swing too far when you hit play thus activating the end sensor.

Anyways, I'm currently servicing my MS16, waiting for a friend to lend me his tentelometer and his MRL calibration tape so I haven't gone too far yet but meanwhile I'm looking for as much information as I can find concerning the transport adjustments. It'd be really nice if you can post a follow-up.

Thanks.
 
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