im in New Hampshire.
i just went through it again, took all the boards out cleaned the contacts, pushed every wire clip on connection dealy, checked for obvious bad cap, broken what nots.
no luck thus far!
i guess the next step is to search for cold solder joints! not a fun activity, but what can you do!
anyone happen to know of any repair people in my part of the country?
I'll let others from the NE answer that question for You.
Fixing cold solder joints is not too hard ( perhaps you have some skill with this already - pardon). Just heat them with an iron and flow a little more solder onto them.
Most of the 2 pinn connectors onthe motherboard are the head connections. P161-164 are erase head, P151-154 are sync head and p121- 124 are PB head.
If it does not matter which head you select (and still get the same sounds) then it is most likely not those connectors (does not hurt to check).
In that case I would look at all the motherboard connectors for each channel card. You can just push on them with a wood or plastic probe to force any crack to make contact and listen for any difference.
I would also measure voltages on each channel card to verify that you are getting them to each slot.
Might be a good time to survey what is working and what is not. Starting with a known good tape with a pre-recorded signal in all channels (Would you risk an MRL....)
For each head (Sync and PB) for each channel there are 3 things to look for when playing back a tape.
1) do the meters move like you expect?
2) do the headphones give the expected signal
3) does line out give the expected signal
Then with a signal going into line in and source selected:
Same 3 questions.
Sorry for rambling so much. Being systematic will help figure this out. Do you have the manual?
Regards, Ethan