Search results

I have definitely seen regulator & motor drive transistors in many things that measured "good" but were weak in use. For instance I had an MS16 in for service recently where the capstan motor maintained speed but lost torque and slowed down after a few minutes... The tip-off, when compared to a...

I have done all of my recordings recently with an MS-16 and a 1/4" Otari MTR-10. Agreed with everything jpmorris had to say - there isn't really a reason you need a 1/2" stereo deck, and if you find one, it's going to be really expensive (only really high end decks like Studers and Ampex ATRs...

It's impossible to damage a tape machine by recording too hot a signal (as long as you don't do something crazy like plug a speaker output into it.) I've recorded plenty of fuzz bass tracks, and things like that, just by cranking a preamp before the tape input as high as it will go without...

I don't think variations in the tape speed (i.e. the intrinsic level of flutter from a given transport) have much to do with the classic ADT/flange sound - a lot of people throw those words around, but a properly operating analog recorder has extremely good timebase stability. If it didn't...

Yes, that can be done and it works pretty well. (As far as I know, no tape machines had separate sync head outputs except some Studers, like the one Abbey Road used.) The delayed copy cannot cancel out the dry signal completely, since there is always some phase and frequency response shift from...

Speed/pitch accuracy has always been of concern to me (even though I'm not in possession of absolute pitch.) You can always trust a 1KHz tone generated from a computer to be exactly the right frequency, because the sample clock is derived from a crystal oscillator. I've never seen an (old)...

Bias is a very high level AC signal (above 100KHz in most cases) applied to the record head along with the audio. The purpose is to linearize the transfer function of the recording process - without it, the tape would be magnetized only in response to very high level signals, which would be...

Don't mean to be a bummer, but that machine, in its factory configuration, is set up to give the correct level of bias for 456 or SM911 only. (It's a 2-head machine, making it a serious chore to recalibrate. Most of the ones I see at work appear never to have been calibrated.) SM900 (and ATR...

Same situation here, I have a tiny spare bedroom (something like 10x10 feet, seriously) that I simply made as dead as possible with foam and other objects. This seems to work great and I have no intention of changing it, being so militantly opposed to room mics (I Hate The 90s™) There is some...

The scrape flutter idler on my MTR-10 got screwed up and was adding gross bearing noise sidebands to everything (esp. test tones...) I removed it and it's better but of course the machine is back to the scrape flutter level of an MX-5050 or something. (I assumed this was OK to do since it barely...

Only half kidding of course. My Polymoog quit on me and I haven't repaired it yet. The main thing I seem to have learned in my recording career is that doing things the most difficult and time-consuming way always produces the best-sounding results, and anyone that says otherwise is probably...

I'm getting started on another record, and after trying a few experiments like this, I'm probably going to eschew the use of polyphonic synths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjs2Dq0CBm4 (...if you haven't guessed I really love the intro to "Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding")

All of the PCBs in the 388 are really prone to developing cold solder joints at their connectors (they're cheapo FR-2 phenolic, without plated through vias). I'd inspect and reflow all of the molex connector solder joints on the backplane PCB that connects all of the channel PCBs to the master...

Is your head missing/open circuit or merely worn out? John French re-lapped a number of them with great success for me when I recently had to restore a BUNCH of 388s. To me it's a better solution than replacing the head because he does some crazy-accurate optical alignment after it is relapped...

These are CTS sliders, the same as the ones used in the ARP Odyssey synthesizer (except that in this EQ they have a center detent), where they are frequently found gummed up / dried up / open circuit / corroded / any other problem you can think of. They are more or less the worst sliders ever...

Seem to have licked it, yeah. I still haven't got the spring scale to verify the pinch roller pressure is right. Since the last post I bought an MS-16 from the first owner - I moved the 85-16 to my friend's studio to cut live tracks there, since it's frustrating to try and overdub yourself on...

It's looking a lot better - there no longer seems to be a big tension skew around that supply roller. Know a good source for a spring scale? The service manual says the pinch roller pressure needs to be 5.5-6.6 lbs

They used cheapo phenolic circuit boards on a lot of these Fostex and Teac machines, with no through plating, so the joints between the record amp boards and the motherboards tend to become cold/cracked if the machines are jarred around or subject to a lot of temperature cycling. Most all of the...

Huh, I was able to get another roller arm from TEAC - p/n 6014103000. Cost about 82 bucks! I put it in and now the pinch roller hits the capstan exactly parallel, as well as my eye can see. It surprises me that a die-cast part could become deformed like that, but it evidently was.

Yes, the panel markings on the 117 indicate that one of the intended uses was for tape noise reduction (straight companding) at a compression/expansion ratio of about 1.4 - but you can't feed it a dbx type I encoded signal off your multitrack (I have tried this) and get correct expansion...