Distortion on ADAT

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fenix

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I'm having problems with one of my adats. On playback, my adat distorts every now and then. My heads are clean, the tapes are new and the distortion does not go to tape because I've played tapes in my other adat and there is not the distortion that you hear on the one adat. Has anyone had similar problems like this? Does this mean the amplifier on the head is about to blow? Also, I'm not really getting any weird tape errors when the distortion occurs (and of course my levels are good).
 
What type of Adat is it. Are all the channels distorting or just certain ones.

Paul
 
You said you're "not really getting any weird tape errors" when this happens. Does this mean that you're not getting ER7, ER8, etc. NOR the error indicator dot? If you're getting either, a good possibility is that your ADATs are losing sync momentarily. This would fit with your description, since each single ADAT would play the material perfectly.

If this is the problem the most likely cause is worn down idler wheels. They're very inexpensive and extremely easy to change yourself. Buy extras so that you have them around. You'll need to change them every so often. The only place that I know of where they're available is straight from Alesis.
 
i'm not getting err7 or anything like that and no red dot errors. What is the idler wheel?
 
I've had similar things happen without error messages, so it might be a good thing to try. It certainly can't hurt.

The idler wheel is a small (about 1 1/2" in diameter) thin wheel that senses and takes up the slack in the tape. Once the rubber gets worn down through normal use, it no longer acts as it should. If you take off the cover of the ADAT, you'll see it in about the center of the ADAT tape space, close to the front (toward you) wall. It has a device that holds it down on top of it with a spring underneath. Don't play with it before you get new ones. Also, you can't tell by looking that it's bad, so don't bother. There may be diagrams at the Alesis site or someone else's page. You might search under "ADAT maintenance" or something to find it.
 
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