388 trouble

[Bobby Darko]

Hey guys,
I recently got me a tascam 388. It wasn't working when I got it but after some recapping and a new belt (done by a tech) it works almost fine. I can record to all the tracks, but track 3 gives me back a bad signal. Much softer and heavily distorted, so my first guess is: the rec head...I hope it's something else. Got any clues?

ps. I cleaned it (head and tape path) very well before use and I put a brand new tape on it

 

[sweetbeats]

Did you try switching amp cards around to see if the trouble follows the card?

 

[Bobby Darko]

no i did not, cuz i am not too handy. But the channels all work fine, it's tracks 3 that fucks up...or could that still be a card??

 

[sweetbeats]

Did you have somebody else do the recapping then? "Not too handy" and "recapping" don't go together.

You have the manual right?

It could still be the REC-PLAY amp card. The amp card handles the amplification to and from the REC/PLAY head among other things.

There are 6 screws that hold the PCB cover onto the unit (the PCB cover is the top panel of the meter bridge). Remove those 6 screws, lift the cover off and you'll see the edges of a bunch of cards. The REC/PLAY amp cards are the 4 cards at the back of the 388 on the left, in other words the very back left, and then the one in the back second from the left, and then the two just forward of those, like this looking down:

BACK OF 388
L R/P CARD R/P CARD
E
F R/P CARD R/P CARD
T

Not sure which cards go to which channels. They might be labeled. You probably want to wait to do anything until you get a second opinion from somebody that owns a 388 , like cjacek or somebody, but if I was having your trouble on my 48 or 58 the first thing I'd do (outside of a good cleaning and degaussing) is swap the card of the track that's acting up with one that's not and see if the problem follows the card. Then you know its pretty much something goofy with the card, and that might just be card connections to the mother PCB needing cleaning with some DeoxIT or even just reseating. You might find that just reseating takes care of the problem.

 

[Bobby Darko]

thanks man, i will look into that, gotta learn this shit sometime before i'm dead anyway. It's just really frustrating. My tech has been to my studio a few times and now he has to come again. This 388 was in some pretty bad shape. I hope this last problem will be fixed soon...