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I believe this was it:

You can record to the A8, rewind and play back afterwards. That definitely works although if you do multiple passes you'll need to manually sync them up inside the DAW. What you can't do is the 3-head trick where you record to tape and get the playback 1/15th of a second later. If you do try...

Lots. At the low end of the scale, Akai decks often have three heads. However these are quarter-track stereo machines from the 1970s. They won't be studio quality and will also be fussy about the kind of tape they're given. Apart from Capture, most of the tape on the market today is intended...

To be fair I haven't run 1" for a long time. However I am regularly using SM900 on 2" and 1/4", plus SM911 on 1/2". The only issues I've had were with the cheap plastic-spooled SM900 I bought as a cost-saving measure, where the plastic spool shattered and it made little tinkling noises as the...

Fantastic. Thanks for posting these! I have a bit of a soft spot for ITAM since they were one of several niche manufacturers. I believe they had their 1/2" 8 track out a year or two before TEAC did it - the ITAM 805 which was made from bits of Revox A77 modified to drive 1/2" tape. The 1610...

I've not noticed any difference since they switched the brand to RTM. Could it be a bad batch?

The guy behind ITAM was Barry Lambden, who went on to found StudioSpares, but seems to have retired in 2018. I remember a few people did try to get in touch with him through that firm to see if he still had any schematics or other info, but I can't remember the outcome.

It looks to me like the capstan flywheel is the motor. It seems to have a permanent magnet on the back, in which case these coils are presumably being energised and de-energised in sequence to make the capstan flywheel rotate.

By my calculations it'll mean the output of the transformer will be about 10% higher than usual, e.g. a 12V line will be about 13V. The voltage regulators can cope with that easily.

Oh, nice! I was going to ask what you were doing for reverb, but it looks like the Shure Vocal Master has a spring reverb in it.

Just checking, is it the same diameter as the old belt is now, or did you take into account that it was originally smaller when it was working?

Not sure what the belt's dimensions are, unfortunately, but it's the same belt as for the Tascam 388 if that helps any. You can find them on ebay fairly widely so it's probably a fairly common type of belt - I just don't know what.

Yeah, that is an amazing score. Lubricating the motors is above my pay grade, unfortunately. If the capstan doesn't have enough torque or slips a bit on startup that's nearly always the drive belt stretching and becoming loose. The weak point on the older TEAC machines tends to be the lever...

The belt may not be in great shape. Not only do they tend to disintegrate with age, but also 20 years in the exact same position could cause it to deform in interesting ways. Also check the pinch roller hasn't gone sticky either.

Someone has very cleverly broken all the links in the intervening 11 years. Fortunately, it turns out I did save a copy back in the day, though digging it up was painful and I was about to give up. Here you go: I think I will also amend my copy of the manual to avoid losing this again.

Yeah, I double-checked and that is the model I've been using for a couple of years now with no real problems. Opening up the gun for cleaning could be easier, but it's been reliable so far (touch wood). The only time it's caused me a problem was when I reassembled the gun incorrectly after...

Yeah, the 'pro' ones with a continuous or trigger-operated electric pump have become quite cheap lately. When I was first looking, you could only get the Hakko ones and they were about £600 or so. Now there's a bunch of cheap ones like the Anesty AZ-915 which is perfectly good for this kind of...

FWIW a vacuum desoldering gun has been a lifesaver for me. It's made desoldering chips infinitely easier.

https://dougtheeagle.com/stuff/xerian5-take1-1644.mp3 ...the mix was a bit rushed but I think it's a good first attempt. Hoping to replace the bad guy voices with guest vocals in a future mix. This was recorded on an Otari MX80, with the bass and vocals done on a TSR-8 for better auto-punchin...