ITAM 1610 schematics?

J

janahdfrazier

New member
Hello folks. I recently acquired an Itam 1610 with auto locator remote in as close to “mint” condition as one could hope for.

So far I’ve repaired the bias power supply and the transport is running great, but I’m having some issues chasing some electrical gremlins. Tracks won’t arm, and the “master card” seems to have been modified and I’m not sure why. Lots of other strange issues I’m having trouble tracking down, too. I have some schematics, but they don’t match my machine exactly, and it seems like there were some revisions. Hoping someone has some schematics for this machine laying around somewhere..
 
What is an Itam 1610 device?
It looks like a Tascam 85-16 but it is made in the UK so you would need to secure documentation from them.
 
Itam 1610 is a 1” 16 track tape recorder with a relatively small footprint. Itam went belly up in the 80’s, so there really is no one to reach out to that I know of. I would love to be proven wrong, though.
 
In 2011 someone on this forum said they had schematics available, but it appears they made an account to make that one post and never logged on again... Maybe they will reappear!
 
Well I only found this which might be of help- I don't know. It came from Electrotanya where I am a member.
 

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This is useful, thank you! Unfortunately it is lacking the schematic for the “master card”, which is what I’m looking for..

Do you know of other sites I could check that might have schematics that can’t be found with a google search? I’ve never heard of Electrotanya before, either..
 
The guy behind ITAM was Barry Lambden, who went on to found StudioSpares, but seems to have retired in 2018. I remember a few people did try to get in touch with him through that firm to see if he still had any schematics or other info, but I can't remember the outcome.
 
You often times with old or weird stuff have to do a lot of work to get the documentation that others may have thrown out. The copy I found was a scan from Germany and that is all there was. There are other sites but they have regular stuff not esoteric or old strange stuff that was made in limited quantity. Try finding who worked on these decks back in the day as these are the places that will have the most complete documentation otherwise you have to spend a lot of time backwards engineering the schematics. As long as there are no strange E proms in it you might be OK but when they get into those then they are not as easy to find as CD4000 cmos chips.
 
jpmorris, thank you! I was able to find Barry's contact information without much trouble, so I'll share what (if anything) comes of it.

The 1610 is not a terribly complicated piece of equipment. Backwards engineering schematics would not be difficult and is something I will consider once I've exhausted other avenues. I've had alot of "aha" moments, only to find that there is something *else* is not quite right. Most perplexing are the broken and rerouted PCB traces, sometimes with the addition of components. Factory or user mod; who knows? Also, when the 24v DC oscillator power supply is plugged in to the deck electronics, things get weird. I've found one tantalum cap on a channel card that failed by shorting, causing total failure of the bias power supply, taking nearly all the transistors with it. A lot of what I'm doing feels like archaeological detective work. Fun, but hoping for a fully functioning machine at some point.
 
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