Tape Trail

Teac X10R reel drag.

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

Hey guys, I have a situation on something that is way out of my knowledge scope and it's quite puzzling. This is my first post in this forum in fact..

I have a very nice Teac X10R reel to reel. It was fully serviced in 2008 and then sat relatively unused for years. I was searching for a space for it in my home system, but really couldn't find any, so I decided to sell. However, upon running it through its paces, I discovered that there is reel lag or drag when you FF or RW the reels.

Here's the part that baffles me. The drag is really not bad and it does get up to speed in about 15 -20 seconds or so, it is tolerable until the take up reel (10 inch reel) gets to about 75 % full, then it starts to slow down, so slow that it seems like it's in about "play" speed and takes nearly 5-8 mins to finish up that last 25%. If I stop the reel there and try to FF or RW it's like stuck in quick sand.

I can't get over how soundly the machine runs until that point, and then loses speed. I mean the motors seem to run flawlessly with enough power to spin a wood lathe. I find it hard to believe it would be struggling to wind the last bit of tape. I have seen some you tube video where a tech shows reel drag, but it does not show the reels struggling once it gets up to speed. The situation in his video was dirty brushes on the motors.

When it comes to vintage amps and pre-amps I kind of know what to do and troubleshoot, but I am at a loss here. Does anyone know what kind of trouble shooting I can do to find out what the issue is? Taking this monster apart not knowing what to look for would be risky.

I can post some videos of the behavior if my description is not clear.

-updated posting, sending a link to a folder that has 4 videos showing the behavior, and one longer video showing general operation of the deck.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rUPnC5tTLf6JNcZyNakoQ0mWcnamljjD?usp=sharing

any help a always appreciated
TEAC X10R reel drag issue (Open in New Window)

Follow Ups:

RE: Teac X10R reel drag. - Victor Khomenko 13:04:35 12/23/20 (1)
- RE: Teac X10R reel drag. - mr9iron 13:47:17 12/23/20 (0)