TEAC 85-16 1" Help!

[wyattt]

OK. I bought this unit about 2 years ago off a kid who thought it was broke mechanically but just didn't have any tape. Now I am selling it, and I haven't used tape in 5 years and that was just for a few weeks in a college class.

I am having a bit of trouble getting this baby to record. I bought some used 456 and got it set up. After troubleshooting the cabling on the back (most of which wasn't labeled and when some cables looked the same), I have gotten the machine to receive a test tone through it on "input mode" and out into my monitors. Every input and output receives signal upon further testing and also shows this on the meter bridge. I can also hear back what was originally on the tape while in "repro mode". But when I arm a channel (blinking light goes on indicating ready) and hold record and play (record light goes solid), I can't get the tone to record to tape. It only plays straight through the input and then to the output.

Here are some pics of my machine. http://picasaweb.google.com/thomasawyatt/TEAC8516#

I have the manual and it seems to be fairly standard but I still am stuck.

I have to admit I am a protools guy, and had hopes of using tape but never got around to it. So any help you could give would be most appreciated.

If you need more clarification, or pics, (such as of the back connections, I can also take some of those.

[psinglet]

In pics 8-10, unless these are pictures from before setup, there are some cables that are disconnected. They are coming from the "rec/play amp" unit and need to be connected to their connections in the dbx unit. If that is the case, it would appear you are hearing the signal through the electronics card, but since it is not going to the dbx, it's never getting to the transport to be recorded.

The cables are male and female, so there is only a limited number of possible connection possibilities. Mine have labels (1 and 2) on the connections. I don't know if these are factory or if someone working on the machine added them at some point. Looking at the back of the machine, the "1" cables are at the right and the "2" cables are to the left.

The other cables appear to be connected properly. Try connecting those cables and see if it works then.

[wyattt]

Yeah. Those were taken before. Sorry for the confusion. There is an additional unit that bypasses the RCA's and utilizes XLR's instead. It backpacks on the back side of the machine and plugs in where those normally plug in. so those, were unplugged for the time being.