Tascam 38 and 58 problem.......

[ausrock]

OK, Tascam gurus, some advice and/or opinions please

A store in Sydney, which BTW is 160klms South of me, has both a 38 and 58 R2R . According to the staff there, the only obvious problem is that while the tape is predominantly on one reel, the machines are somewhat slow to get up to speed. Once sufficient tape has transfered to the other reel...........in other words there is less mass to start turning...........this problem seems to go away.

Can anyone shed some light on the possible causes of this phenomenon and advise on the possibility of fixing it.

 

[longsoughtfor]

Chris - do both decks behave the same way? Is this only during play or does it happen in FF & RWD as well?

If they are belt driven (from a single motor) I would suspect that (replace or tension). Other wise you could check that the capstan & pinch roller are not slipping at all.

Last would be the power supply or the motor (s).

Kevin.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

This sounds like the classic replace the reel motor syndrome.

I own a 38. Been there done that.

The only belt in the 38 is for the capstan and that has nothing to do with the problem you described.

The 58 is a 3 motor direct drive system. No belts in there at all.

It a 200 - 300 dollar repair in canadian dollars.

If thats all that wrong with it and the price is right, go for it. TASCAM should still have the motors in stock.

Cheers!

 

[ausrock]

Hmmmmmm...................thanks for that info guys.

Kevin, as far as I could understand the sales guy, both machine have the same problem, but that's about all the info I could get.

Well these units are currently $600 Aust for the 38 and $800 for the 58. Somehow I think there would have to be some pretty heavy negotiating before I commited to either unit.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

There is also the possibility that there is nothing wrong with either machine and just the dude in the store doesn't know anything about reel to reels!!

After re-reading your post, it occurred to me that perhaps because it is natural for a healthy machine to spin quickly when the reel of tape is empty and the reverse when it is full, that they just thought it was slow, when in fact, it might be normal.

The winding spec for both machine is 240ips, ( inches per second) that means that on a 2500 ft roll of tape should wind in 2 minutes and 5 seconds.

Go to the store with a reel of tape, or buy one, and time how long it takes to fast wind a reel from start to end. If the time is significantly longer then that, there is a problem, if not, the guy at the store is just dumb about the technology.

Cheers!

 

[A Reel Person]

Sounds to me like the tape is sticky,...

and will cause sluggish performace, until the tape is wound enough times to loosen up the tape on the reel, & mitigate the stickiness it develops from being in a tight-wind all it's life.