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 )
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.
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 )
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.