Tascam 388 Recording Issues

[xyzandertaylor]

Hey there,

I recently bought a Tascam 388 and I am having trouble figuring out why Tracks 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are not recording onto the tape.

I have new appropriate tape purchased and in the machine.
I have pulled, examined swapped and reseated ALL of the PCB record/play cards. The cards looked immaculate and even after swapping various cards, only channels 1 and 3 are still recording so I can rule out it being a PCB card issue.

I have everything routed 100% perfectly both for recording on the tracks and when playing back. My problem is that nothing really seems to record onto tracks 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Or I have incredibly low playback volume on a track or two but it's mostly nothing coming through at all. I feel like this may be a tape head issue but I have no idea. I will try and attach some photos of the tape heads for review.

Any idea what this issue could be? Thanks so much!

 

[Mark7]

That's nearly all the tracks. Clearly something is very wrong here

 

[jpmorris]

It's difficult to tell from the photo whether that's dirt on the record head or reflections. Make sure it's clean, it takes a surprisingly small amount of crud to stop it recording clearly.
Out of interest, have you tried flipping the tape for playback, to see whether tracks recorded on 1 and 3 play back clearly on 8 and 6?

EDIT: Also, have you tried switching DBX off? Not that I'm expecting it to make any difference, but since that would give it a different encode/decode path, it's worth ruling out.