Tascam 388 Users?

[Joe Nathan]

Tascam 388 Users?

Hello,

I purchased a 388 in 1990 recorded on it for years then gave it to a friend in 1994-95 who had the space to keep it safe. Last week he gave it back to me since I now had the space again. My plan is to play back all the tapes and record each track to DVD as a wave and Aiff. There are about 50 tapes full of music so allot to do before they crumble into dust. Well to my point and apologies for the long rant. This machine has one problem it can not rewind and fast forward to well unless I manually push in the far right and far left (I don't know what to call it) where the tape rests and move up and down. Can I do anything to remedy it myself? I know it's kind of hard to find repair people for these old rigs any one have a Tascam repair connections in northern California. Any thoughts?

-jo

 

[A Reel Person]

Yes!

It's really not such a difficult repair:
Under the cover, there's what's called the "Reel/Servo" card. On the Reel/Servo card, there's RH and LH tension arm position. This is the analog servo adjustment that should align the center of the tension roller with the bottom of the Idler roller, (see manual for geometry diagram).

Cutting to the chase,... if you adjust the RH and LH tension arm position to their proper place, this miraculously affects the effectiveness of the FF/RW functions, through the "magic" high-tech of analog servos.

Try that, reference the manual, take a shot at adjustment, and call me in the morning./DA

 

[pjpjpj]

keep in mind

Hey,
After transferring your tape to digital...make sure you keep the tapes as the tape format..believe it or not has proven to be a great long lasting and actually a very good storage for your tracks (as long is it's the modern 1/4" quantegy etc...of course the dvd format is much better than the adat and digital tape. Cd's have been shown to fail after 5 to 10 years.
pj