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Heh, I was going to suggest washing-up liquid, that's pretty good at breaking down grease. Good to hear it worked!

Looking at a picture of the transport, it looks like the brake spring has several holes to vary the amount of force as is done on the Revox machines. I caused myself a big problem on the B77 by putting the spring back in the wrong hole, so you might want to try adjusting that. Another usual...

Good luck. It had occurred to me that it might be worth checking the resistance of the motor, or at least the continuity, but I didn't actually know what results to expect.

That worries me given that these are 24v motors. I think you'll need someone with more electronics skills than me to determine whether that's right, and if not, why it's doing that. It's possible 32V is normal and the servo board is doing something clever to limit the voltage going into the...

I think the Capture tape is lower-output stuff. Not generally what I need, though - and I'm not sure how easy it would even be to get this side of the pond.

Well, conveniently the service manual says stuff-all about how the capstan motor is driven. AFAIK they have a driver board on or nearby the motor itself which isn't documented. However, if I'm reading the pinouts for that daughterboard correctly, pin 1 is either connected to 2 or 4 depending on...

If it were me I'd be trying to find out whether the correct voltage is getting into the motor, but I'm not sure offhand how best to do that. IIRC they're 24V DC motors usually run in a 12V configuration with an initial pulse of 24V to start them. So yes, if you know the pinout you might be...

Did you visually inspect them or use a multimeter to actually test them?

Silly question, have you checked the fuse board? I forget how the 30-series work, but there might be a separate fuse specifically for the capstan motor. EDIT: Yeah - if I'm reading the '32 schematics correctly, the capstan runs off a different fuse from the reel motors. I think it's F505 for...

Has the microswitch on the tension arm failed?

While checking for crud is definitely a good idea, the fact that it happens at the halfway point sounds to me like the back tension is overpowering the capstan. I was getting this with the B77, after the halfway mark it started to go out of whack as the load distribution between the takeup and...

Yeah, if it's not the tape itself, suspect the capstan drive. I've seen this happen if the pinch roller isn't gripping properly. Might also be worth checking the capstan belt, make sure that isn't starting to get loose.

The B77 has some limited mixing abilities allowing it to perform trick recording like sound-on-sound or turning the machine into a primitive tape echo. All it can really do is combine the input with the playback and sum the left and right channels to mono. It doesn't have a send/receive loop...

To complete the explanation, you can use this gap between the record and play heads to make an echo by combining the delayed sounds with the original input using some kind of mixer. (The Revox B77 has this mixing feature built-in). Usually you'll just get one echo (slapback) which can work...

Most tape machines are line level, either +4 or -10. They expect the signal to have already gone through a preamp. With the A8 note that it can only record 4 tracks at once. It can play back all 8, however - you just have to select whether you're recording to the upper or lower bank of tracks...

Have you already tried using an isolator in case it's a ground-loop issue? The Behringer HD400 is good as it has 1/4" jacks, but even the cheap 3.5mm ones off ebay will work given the right adaptors.

Well, you can't compare bit rates like that. An 8-bit 6KHz stereo file will have a bit rate of 96Kbit, but it will still make that opus file sound like the pinnacle of high-fidelity recording. That said, the artifacting in your music is very obvious and horrible so I apologise for what has...

Pictures, yes. MP3 - I doubt it. I think most people post links to SoundCloud or YouTube.

On the 1/2" and 1/4" tapes I have to pull the tape off the shelf and look at the listing on the back. However I can usually tell roughly where it would be from the surrounding songs, since nearly everything I write goes on an album. On the 1" and 2" tapes there's enough room on the spine to...

I have to admit that moving from the A8 to the TSR-8 was a massive step upwards. Whatever you decide to do, good luck with it!