syncing drum machine to drum machine on tape

[yetipur]

Hello,
I hope this is the riight place to post this question. I am trying to sync 2 drum machines onto analog tape. The drum machines are basic (cheap ) drum machines.
At one point I was able to separate tracks of drums and manually sync them onto separate tracks on a 16 track analog , (kick, drum, HH hat ect all separated and in time) I just used a guide symbol and would record each one separatly but now I am using a pre amp (avalon) and it isnt working.
Could it be that the pre amp is the problem?

Or could it be because the avalon and the drum machine arent of the same class of equipment?

?