Tascam 244, Belts replaced, now will not play

RobinDe

New member
Hello Tascam User Forum

A couple of weeks ago I got my old 244 out of storage with the intention of digitising all my old tapes. Of course, all the belts had disintegrated and with the help of some old postings here, and the links to Dr. Zee's workshop site (sorry, can't post a link), I managed to get everything into a decent working order.

Many thanks for all the old postings on this subject.

I had 40 tapes to digitise and I got through 36 of them, but now unfortunately, the 244 won't play anything. i.e. even the tapes I digitised already that worked yesterday.

The capstan belt looks fine, so does the control belt. The tapes are fine (not jammed or anything). FF and Rewind are ok.

When I press play, the tape starts to turn, then everything stops and the heads disengage - like it got to the end of the tape.

Any clues? I'd love to get the remaining tapes digitised.

Thanks again.
Robin
 
Ok, I am no expert in recording but I loved my 244 and the problems that came with it! First, clean the capstan roller and degauss the head, which I'm guessing you have already done.

Second, I used to have to rewind some of my tapes with a pencil because the 244 would wind them too tightly and then wouldn't play them!

Third and major headaches, maybe a microswitch is bad, and the deck is sensing a stopped tape.

Try putting an unrecorded tape in and pressing play. If that works your precious demos may be wound too tightly and are now binding...

THAT actually worked for me.
 
Another thought: Lazy drive motor. The deck will automatically switch off if it senses tape not moving. A tired drive motor which is not sufficiently turning the tape will cause a shutoff to prevent what the deck is sensing as tape winding around the capstan roller. Just my 2cents.
 
Thanks for the ideas guys.

As it happens, I've now digitised the remaining tapes. I used a regular cassette player and digitised the signal when playing the tapes at regular speed, then turned them over and recorded the other side.

This gave me the four tracks that the 244 had recorded, albeit too slow and with two tracks backwards!

So than I used Audition to reverse the backwards tracks and then speed them all up.

Worked well enough. My early recording are now all digitised.

I never got the to bottom of the problem with the 244 unfortunately and it has now passed on to silicon heaven.

Best regards
 
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