tsr-8 LEDs indicate recording level is fine, but there is VERY faint sound recorded:

[fewhitrecords]

i had wanted to "move up" from a (very reliable) fostex 80 to 1/2" and last night, after finding a good TSR-8 and getting it cleaned/calibrated by our local denver tech i swapped it in. we got sound in the control room, we got levels looking hot on the LEDs on the deck, we ran through our first song and rushed in to listen back to it and... nothing. no sound, no lights-like there was nothing recorded. what a disappointment.

we are running from the decks rca outs back to xlr ins on the board. its an 80s allen and heath system 8 board, and again, the levels on the deck looked great as we were recording, that's what is so weird. earlier when i first got it i recorded me talking into a mic through a tascam 208 and as i recall, it recorded fine, but today i did it again and it is there but VERY quiet. is this a +4/-10 issue? or something else i am missing? any help would be greatly appreciated! fwiw, i tried the one mic today on the -4, the +10, and the "variable" setting on the tsr and none worked any better than the next one...

 

[jpmorris]

There are a few typical reasons this might happen. Some of these are slightly embarrassing but have happened on this board before:
1. The recording tracks are still armed (i.e. the arming LED for each track is still lit)
2. You have 'All Input' selected
3. The tape is threaded upside-down, with the backing against the heads instead of the oxide
4. Crud on the heads. Several people have had the machine arrive with the heads utterly black with oxide. With mine I wondered if it was supposed to be like that for a few seconds.

If none of these are the case, have you tried recording test signals with DBX on and off? Which LEDs are actually lit when you're playing back?

 

[fewhitrecords]

thanks for the reply. when we left it armed by mistake we got a LF whump-ing, so we corrected that quickly. we do not have "all input" selected. the tape is "brown side in" and threaded correctly. the heads were just cleaned.

we tried dbx on&off, and it made no difference. the LEDs on channels 1-5 were lit and looking good for recording the song! this is so maddening and disappointing...

any other ideas?

 

[Beck]

Check to make sure the tape lifters are fully retracted while in record and play modes. They could be lifting the tape slightly off the heads and thus preventing anything printing to tape or playing back from tape. Look closely with a flashlight while in record and play modes to make sure the tape is indeed in contact with the heads.

If the machine is calibrated correctly for the tape you’re using, the meters will show the same level on playback as they did during recording. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a miss-match in line levels between -10 and +4... the meters will tell you if you’ve recorded anything on playback even if you can’t hear it.

Also, what kind of tape are you using and did you buy it new and sealed? Old tape with sticky shed syndrome can show a big drop in playback levels and obviously audible loss of high frequencies. However, it won’t cause there to be no signal at all. It usually presents as muffled muddy sound with several dB in signal loss.

Even more embarrassing though it could happen… are you sure you hit record and not just play when you laid down the tracks? When the TSR-8 is actually recording the armed track indicator LEDs stop blinking and go solid on.

JP nicely covered everything else that it might be.

 

[fewhitrecords]

thanks for that-i will get a flashlight and look for any gaps. tape is good, it worked great on the tsr-8 i just sold plus we tried 2 different reels of it, so i don't think that's the issue. no sticky shed syndrome, in any case-the heads still look sparkly&beautiful...