Tascam 388 mysterious drama - Advice, please!

[Biff Wisco]

My trusty 388 has been so good to me for the past three years, and usually any weird glitches are easy to fix, but this one has me stumped.

I load some tape up. Press play. The heads engage & the pinch roller snuggles up on the tape for a split second, and everything looks good for about a quarter of a second. Then, CLICK! Just a quickly, it all falls right back to where it came from. And weirdly, the "Play" light stays on after that, although everything's disengaged, and nothing's moving... Same scenario with rewind or FF.

Any advice would be so wonderful... I want to get back up and running a soon as possible. Thanks a million!!!

[Herm]

Pull the bottom cover off it may just be the capstan drive belt. And its easy and cheap to fix yourself.

[Biff Wisco]

Thanks much for the advice-- After some poking around inside, I found that one of the 5 fuses was blown. East fix, thank you lord!