Just bought a tascam 488 and need some advice

[sterndrup]

hey there...has anyone had any experience with tascam's service department. I just bought a used 488 and it needs refurbished. I can either send it to an electronics guy or tascam's repair shop. I'm sure both have their benefits.

has anyone refurbished any of their cassette multitracks?

any advice?

thanks

[KEVIN1600]

good luck I had a 488mk11 i never had to get it serviced.

[A Reel Person]

I've refurbished a 244, 234 and 264. Most Portastudios are very similar on the inside.

Replacing the capstan belt is not that difficult, but is a moderate teardown of the unit. For FF/RW problems there are the "tires" on the clutch assembly that's a bit more embedded in the mechanism, and would be a pretty significant teardown.

This is not rocket science, but it's a good amount of disassembly, including many small screws, cables & connectors. You'd need at least a basic-to-moderate techy skills to do these repairs yourself,... or if you started out a rank novice on this, you'd be a moderate techy when you're done!

There's nothing wrong with having a qualified tech refurbish this unit, but you'd save a ton of money by doing it yourself, provided you got in and out cleanly affecting a fix without breaking it or causing other problems.

NOTE: I just remembered, if you want a really good pictorial explanation of the refurbishment of a Portastudio, search for Dr ZEE's posts and on his personal website he has the refurbishment of a 244 pictorial,... also a 144 (I think). It does a good job of explaining the steps and showing the guts in pictures.

FOUND THEM:
TEAC 144
TASCAM 244

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Stern:If you send one to a "repair" service, you might as well buy a Yamaha AW1600 and save you time, money, and a good-sounding box.There is a very good help site dedicated to the Yam 1600.For speed, I can burn tracks very fast.* I just did 15 tracks and it took about 9 minutes.* Of course, the more tracks you burn, the longer it takes but it's faster than my older Yam 4416 which "IS" slow.But, if you like to work hard at the repair or pay for repairs....Best of luck.Green Hornet