Teac 80-8 dropouts and tremolo

[tewar]

I'm a proud owner of a Teac 80-8, so far I have
1. Cleaned
2. Bought a MRL tape and aligned reproduce, record and Bias (to the best of my abilities) - Haven't been able to work with azimuth because of lack of scope
3. Bought a new RMGI 911 tape

It seems to be working reasonably well with a few problems.

1.When I record a sustained acoustic guitar chord, on playback it sounds like it has a tremolo on it.

2. It has occasional dropouts on the NORMAL head, not so much on the MONITOR head.

3. Channel 8 seems to have no high end response

Any help would really be appreciated

 

[allegro1650]

For an analog tape deck, "tremelo" = "wow and flutter". You may need to go through the tape path a piece at a time, and chase down the offending part (rollers, tape guides, perhaps even an errant capstan).

On a machine of that vintage, don't count on the heads being in any great shape. The Teac 1/2" 8-track format machines were used in lots of different ways, by people who may or may not have kept up maintenance.

Here's a link to the 80-8 service manual .pdf!