F
fstrat76
Member
I'm back....
After waiting quite a while for a RMGI replacement tape due to shedding issues, the tapes were finally shipped and I'm able to resume alignment and calibration. During this down time, I took the head base off, cleaned everything thoroughly and was able to rotate all guides and even the tape lifters to get a nice machine finished side. Setup the tape path and ready to go.
Now back to the electronic adjustments, I went through all the alignment and adjustments again and was discouraged that the same thing was occurring during Repro and Sync EQ adjustment as a couple months ago. That is, the 16kHz tone level would jump all over on tracks 1 and 2 during sync playback, slow increase then decrease, back and forth, unstable levels. Every other procedure checks out except this high frequency calibration.
Previously, when this first occurred, I swapped cards from track 3 to track 1 etc. This time, frustrated, I pulled track 4 card which calibrates nicely on all procedures, pulled track 2 card and swapped them.
Well, its weird, but everything seems to work now. Just swapping track 2 with track 4 cards, tracks 1, 2, and 4 can be adjusted fine now. I went through all the cal steps again just to make sure.
Of course, not being a fan of this kind of fix without an explanation, I will keep testing this over the next week to see how stable this is. If the issue reoccurs, I have a spare 38 I bought for parts but I'd need to know where to start investigating.
I guess the question is, even though I swapped cards a couple months ago, why swapping tracks 2 and 4 cards, fixed tracks 1 and 2 now?
After waiting quite a while for a RMGI replacement tape due to shedding issues, the tapes were finally shipped and I'm able to resume alignment and calibration. During this down time, I took the head base off, cleaned everything thoroughly and was able to rotate all guides and even the tape lifters to get a nice machine finished side. Setup the tape path and ready to go.
Now back to the electronic adjustments, I went through all the alignment and adjustments again and was discouraged that the same thing was occurring during Repro and Sync EQ adjustment as a couple months ago. That is, the 16kHz tone level would jump all over on tracks 1 and 2 during sync playback, slow increase then decrease, back and forth, unstable levels. Every other procedure checks out except this high frequency calibration.
Previously, when this first occurred, I swapped cards from track 3 to track 1 etc. This time, frustrated, I pulled track 4 card which calibrates nicely on all procedures, pulled track 2 card and swapped them.
Well, its weird, but everything seems to work now. Just swapping track 2 with track 4 cards, tracks 1, 2, and 4 can be adjusted fine now. I went through all the cal steps again just to make sure.
Of course, not being a fan of this kind of fix without an explanation, I will keep testing this over the next week to see how stable this is. If the issue reoccurs, I have a spare 38 I bought for parts but I'd need to know where to start investigating.
I guess the question is, even though I swapped cards a couple months ago, why swapping tracks 2 and 4 cards, fixed tracks 1 and 2 now?