Message Board

Hi Eric, This either is a result from a nasty dirt accumulation on that track of the head OR if you clean the head and scrub it good but the black center color mark will not come off, then that may be what is called an open gap on the head and will require the replacement of the head. They are not $...

Hello Lost, You are right to box up any good deck for transportation purposes. The front is of more importance than the back. If you get to a location and the reel tables are pushed in the deck becomes unusable until you take it apart enough to get the reel tables positioned correctly. There are a l...

Hello Prospective Otari buyer; Those machines are amazing units when adjusted and set up correctly. The Teac 80-8 is really pretty old technology and I am not against using one but if I had to compare an Otari deck to a Teac deck the comparison would be between the Otari and the Tascam 48 or 58 deck...

Hello Chris, The head alignment of 80-8 does not drift so easily and thus the need to adjust the heads is not a good idea unless you have al the equipment needed beside scopes, you need a good AC millivolt meter with dB scale and a few other things like a sine wave generator and attenuator. If you t...

Hi Whitestone, Tape decks from Japan are kind of similar. In fact the Teac Manager who hired me in the good old days to work at Teac now works at Fostex. Moisture in my experience has never caused the failure of a motor but might make the exterior oxidize depending on finish. The issues you are expe...

Hi Egolts, The 60 series must have a manual that is in a binder. Just like all the other high end Tascam units. The Owners Manual is he same as the service manual for this level of machine. It is not likely that you will get some poor soul to scan that many pages for free. If so I would use a copy. ...

Hi Cupid, I would use the Windex for the external surface as that always caused no harm to the units I have worked on in the post. The Pots could be sprayed out with a contact cleaner but I would use Caig Preservit solution to finalize the cleaning. That is what I am using in the consoles at the sta...

Hi Kevin, Burr Brown is a company not a type of op amp. Most of the time they are found in CD players in the use of D-A converters. These products may not be the best components but they are considered high end. I have not seen too many Op Amps made by them but that does not mean they don't make the...

Hi Lysander, Despite the Teac and Tascam brands doing well over the years, the entry into this digital stuff might be getting them in over their heads. The DA88 was a device that had all kinds of Sony parts in them so you wonder what they are up to. I know their Teac VCR's were either Funai (the jun...

Hi Mobtown, The way the mixer would handle this is by way of an I/O from the dB25 connector on the back. A small logic signal would drive an opto component like a 4N33 and then that would be routed to a solid state relay or a transistor if you were controlling DC. I have done it lots of times workin...

Hi Tired, That machine is pretty old and has a lot of relay type stuff that can go wrong and give you headaches. I worked on a number of them. Once you get it into working condition it is like a tank. If you need further help do not hesitate to give me an E mail directly. skywavebe@sbcglobal.net I w...

Hello Evil, From what you said and I know about computers because I have been building them like everyone else, it seems you are using a higher end audio card and do not need on board audio. Why not disable the Realtek audio from the Cmos (BIOS) and then see if it gives you trouble then. Working in ...

Hello Curtis, I just got finished working on a 38 using SM911 tape. There has never been any issues I have found with that tape. SM900 yes, but very limited. The deck having been moved and reconnected may have different setup than where it was before. How are you evaluating the noise level with resp...

Hi Kevin, I have used one of these as well as it's later brothers and there is no reason to want to modify it to anything else. It does a fine job by it's original design. I have the M50, M520 and a M512 for parts that is broken down. The reason I bought this was to manage a greatly oversized stereo...

Hi Dakota, I did get your E mail but I am responding to you from work. I had a look at the switch circuit of the deck in question and what is happening is that the two head coils are wired in series with a switch in the interconnect that shorts out the 2T head when the 4 track head is being used. In...