Should I Give Up on my Tascam 424? It has speed issues.

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:01 pm

The title pretty much says it all. The tape speed is totally unreliable, regardless of whether I'm touching it or no. Is it possible to do a hard bypass of the speed control?

'Course, the inputs are pretty sketchy too--as in, 3 & 4 don't often work. Kinda leaves me uninspired when I think about opening it up and making some half-@ssed repair. Although maybe I could just make two half-assed repairs and have a whole-assed tape deck again.

Anyway, I've got like 80 cassettes with unfinished work on them, or I'd just say screw it and move on to some other obsolete format (4tk R2R koff koff). (I'm borrowing a friend's Mk. III for the moment, as I'm currently too broke to buy another Mk. II for a hundred bucks or whatever.)

j.harv · Post by **j.harv** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:25 pm

Whats going on with the tape speed?
Is it kind of a warbling type thing????
If the belt is old,stretched,worn out,you will not have a consistent tape speed.
How old is the belt???
Have you changed it recently?.If not,give that a try.

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:41 pm

The tape speed is consistent, it's just never the same thing twice. Something heavy fell right on the 'pitch control' knob several years ago, and I've been kinda waiting for it to go bad. I shouldn't assume that it's not the belt, though. It's never been changed. I've never even had the machine open.

j.harv · Post by **j.harv** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:31 pm

Well if something got dropped on the pitch control,I would open'er up and take a look.The knob is probably soldered to a PCB.If something got dropped on the knob,it could have fractured the solder joints.And over time they could get worse.This could lead to the speed issue.If your comfortable taking shit apart,then giver try.If this was my problem I wouldn't hesitate opening that sucker up to take a look.I always enjoy doing that sort of thing.

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 7:37 pm

If the knob (or, rather, the pot it's attached to) itself is bad maybe you can bypass it completely by either removing it and hooking its wiper lug to the input lug or using a fixed resistor or leaving the circuit open there. You'd lose varispeed, but might get consistency again. Or, maybe it's some weird-ass knob that I wouldn't understand.

creaturesleeper · Post by **creaturesleeper** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:20 pm

I'd check that pot for sure...a likely starting point. And perhaps a visit to rehab...for the speed problem...Heee. sorry

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:12 pm

Yeah, I think I'm going to try some DIY 'rehab' on this thing. I'll try to post some pics.

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:53 am

I FIXED IT!!! I FIXED IT!!! I FIXED IT!!!

The speed control has its own little PCB. Turns out the screw holding the thing in place had come loose & the whole PCB was capable of wiggling a couple mm. I'm not sure why this would have the effect of causing the speed to get all wobbly, but I swapped screws around 'till I got a tight fit, and the problem seems to be resolved. 'Course, I'm not planning on using the speed control at all if I can possibly help it, 'cause I don't have much faith in that crappy little rheostat, and there's no easy bypass I can see. But with a little luck this'll allow me to get my cassette 4-tracks into another format.

Jeebus, it's good to have something go right for once.

mrc · Post by **mrc** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:17 pm

You might think about unplugging it and spraying some electrical cleaner in the pot while sweeping it side to side a few times. I do this to pots all the time and it cleans up lots of little nasty surprises.

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:12 pm

Yeah, I tried all that stuff long ago. The loose PCB seems to have been the problem. I tighteneded up the screws for all the other boards as well, and that seems to have solved about 80% of my input problems as well.

It's creepy, 'cause there aren't any actual pots, or switches, or jacks, or anything--just these weird little half-existing things which are glommed onto the pcbs with solder. It's... icky. But you know what? It works, and I like it. So I for now I'll just sit here and be happy.

I made a similar repair on my punk-ass Vox amp (VT-20 or some such) which started giving me a bunch of crap on both input and output. I opened it up, saw that I couldn't do anything significant, did my best to make sure everything was tight, and slapped it back together. Mysteriously, it worked.

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Should I Give Up on my Tascam 424? It has speed issues.

Should I Give Up on my Tascam 424? It has speed issues.

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