Help - Portastudio 424

[Laserpig]

I used a demag. tape, and a cleaning tape in my Portastudio 424, and now it won't record. BOth tapes were brand new (just bought the prev. day). Now if i hit record, the play light goes on, and the recording light flashes - and no sound is recorded. Playback is fine.

Please Help !!!
babel_rush@hotmail.com

[Hano]

Demag tapes don't excist. Well I mean there is no tape inside. If you want to demagnetise, the power of the recorder should always be powered of. Else you would do exactly the opposite of what you intended.

The use of Cleaning Tape should be avoided, because it will bring physical dammmage to your tape heads afer a while.

Use cotton cleaning sticks(for cleaning ears and keyboards) and alcohol based solutions, for tape head cleaning. The products they provide with this tapehead cleaner should do fine.

Go and see a technician, and explain him what you did. He can measure the amount of Gauss on your tape-heads, and see if he can still reverse the problems you have created.

Maybe you have not checked all the routings of your recorder, and it all is maybe still working fine. Check the levels and the pan/pot knob situation again. See if you haven't forgotten some switch....
Usually the problem is solved by something simple.

Good luck. Hope things go well in the future.
Enjoy the music.

[This message has been edited by Hano (edited 07-24-2000).]

[El Barto]

Don't forget to make sure you set which tracks to record and how to record them with the switches below the tape (Direct or Buss L/R)...a blinking record light usually means you haven't done this.

[waness]

There are demagnetizing tapes, sort of. I went to Radio Shack to look for a head demagnetizer and what they had was a demagnetizer in cassette form. No tape, just electronics, including a little battery, all in what looks like the body of a regular cassette.

[lazyboy]

I almost bought one of them when I got my 424 a couple of years ago. The reason I didn't is because the heads on the 424 are (Servo?) controlled (meaning not manual) So you have to have the power on to raise the heads. Knowing that the power should not be on when you demag, I didn't buy it. I was being cautious, but I don't really know if doing that would magnitize and subsequently ruin the heads. Is this what you did? If so, I wonder why it would only affect recording and not playback. I want to say it sounds like a different problem. Did you try Barto's advice? I know that's when mine flashes.

[MM2]

Ditto Barto & lazyboy.

[Gear_Junky]

I know not to use "cleaning tapes", but I remember having bought a cleaning cassette for my car stereo, which didn't have any tape in it, but had something similar to cotton swabs - pads. you'd put cleaning solution on them (alchohol) and play it a few secs. Are these ok? Not that I'm too lazy to clean manually...