Fostex E16 Transport Problems / Issues - machine does Fast Forward only

R

radambe

New member
After recovering my E16 that was lent to a friend and returned in far worse condition than it left in....

I've discovered that the transport seems to have completely lost its mind.

When I power the machine on, and press any transport button, even the STOP button, the machine starts spinning the reels at very high speed as if it's going into a nearly out of control Fast Forward operation. The first time I powered it on and it did this, I had to actually cut the power to get it to stop.

After letting it sit for a couple of days, I decided to attempt to investigate a little further, and found that the machine does now at least STOP when I hit the stop button, but it is still just going into Fast Forward no matter which transport button I press (it stops when I hit the STOP button after any of the others).

So basically, no matter whether I hit STOP, PLAY, FF or Rewind, the machine only ever seems to do Fast Forward.

Also, I noticed that the capstan does NOT spin at all until I hit one of the transport buttons. Even when I lift both tension arms, the capstan stands still until I hit one of the transport buttons.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Could this be as simply as a capacitor that needs replacing or does it sound like the transport controller is totally blown, or?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
 
Any idea what was done to it? It might be as simple as the key matrix for the control panel being fouled up somehow, i.e. the keyboard scanner is always seeing the FFWD command. If there's crud in the keypads that's dried out it may explain why the stop button started to work again.
Otherwise, it might be an issue with the control panel CPU, or the inputs it is being given. Do you have access to any kind of remote control, to see whether it still goes weird if you don't use the front panel controls? I'm not sure how the capstan behaves or is controlled on these machine,s but I think I have a PDF of service manual at home so I might check it then if I remember.
 
radambe said:
Also, I noticed that the capstan does NOT spin at all until I hit one of the transport buttons. Even when I lift both tension arms, the capstan stands still until I hit one of the transport buttons.
Click to expand...

This is completely normal - I just checked and my Fostex does exactly the same.

I can't really help with the other problem apart from suggesting that you re-seat all the connectors around the motor control board (the big one covering most of the top half of the machine). The board hinges down for easy access. It sounds like the control line to the associated motor drive transistor (Q101) or the driver (Q26) may be intermittent.
 
Question: If you have no tape on the machine but defeat the tension rollers, do both reels spin? For a normal fast-forward operation on most decks, the left spool should also turn somewhat to provide back-tension. And that would imply that the motor control is fine but the machine is getting a garbled signal from the control panel.

If, however, it's literally only the right-hand spool going into fast-wind mode, and the other spool remains stock still, that would suggest an issue with the motor drive amp as James Perrett suggests.
 
Thank you all for these thoughts. I will try to investigate a bit more and post back hopefully with answers to the couple of questions that have been asked.

I do have a really good tech locally here that I could/probably will take this machine to. I guess i'm just hoping to get at least some idea of what MIGHT be the problem so I can have some sense of whether or not the diagnostics cost will be money well spent or not, like is the machine fixable or not...
 
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