Idler Wheel Question

[Blue Bear Sound]

I've always been outright replacing the wheels as part of normal maintenance on my XT20s, but someone mentioned that they could also be cleaned rather than replaced.

How can you tell if you simply need to clean the idler vs. having to replace it completely?

Thanks...

Bruce

[David]

Bruce...how often do you change the idler wheel? At the time of each head cleaning? Reason being, I've only changed one in an old blackface couple yrs back, and this was after several thousand miles I'm sure , but you could really tell the diffrence in the the little rubber O-ring on the original, it was worn down to the plastic. This helped for a bit on it but I had other issues going on with the transport at the time. My lx20 is due for it's second cleaning pretty soon, guess I need to check the wheel eh? That brings me to another question----can you even still get stuff like that from alesis with all the mombo-jumbo that's going on with them? If I remember right, the shipping on the wheel was more than the price of the idler wheel...need to stock up I guess.

[Blue Bear Sound]

I've been doing maintenance every 250 hours or so.... and I've been replacing the idler each time. The 250 mark (very roughly or course) is where I start noticing more interpolation errors.

As for the parts - I had the foresight to buy about 6 of them about a year ago, so I have a few. I could be wrong but I can't imagine Alesis not continuing to supply parts for a while longer - there are A LOT of ADAT users out there.

BUT - I would stock up on em if you plan to keep your ADATs alive for any length of time!

Bruce

[mnicoletti]

Don't laugh but you can actually use Formula 409 on the wheel (409 is just a degreaser)! Do not use head cleaner or tape recorder rubber cleaner on it though.

Mike

[Blue Bear Sound]

OK Mike, thanks... but how do you know when they need outright replacing, or a simple cleaning?

Bruce

[mnicoletti]

Ummm...if the cleaning does not help it needs to be replaced....

Don't mean to be a smart-ass but there is really no other way...

Mike

[Blue Bear Sound]

No wonder those techs get paid the big bucks!!!



Bruce