Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

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RE: Where's the sense of adventure? What would MacGyver do?

Posted by ironbut (A) on September 28, 2007 at 19:40:17

In Reply to: RE: Where's the sense of adventure? What would MacGyver do? posted by jtkarma on September 28, 2007 at 10:50:00:

I say go for it! There used to be a step by step instruction page on lapping heads. I was thinking it was on the Nortronics site but I didn't see it there. They used to sell a kit.
I'm thinking that it's not the grooved heads that's you problem though. You say that you get zero sound from the left channel. Even if the tape was just touching the outside edge of the head (left channel is the outermost position on a 1/4 track head) you should get sound. Put on an old tape and move the tape as it's playing against the head with your finger just before and after the head. While you have your finger out, try dragging it on the supply reel increasing tape tension. Look at the tape path for anything that might be keeping the tape from making decent contact with the head. Is the tape centered on all the guides and heads? A shift of the tape path toward the face of your deck could be keeping it from going over the left channel part of the playback head.
Another thing it could be is your playback level pots. Try rotating both over and over. Is it scratchy sounding? If so, get yourself some Caig DeOxit and squirt in the little opening on the back of the pots and rotate over and over.
Do your tests with headphones from the jack on the Teac. That rules out any problems with the RCA>IC>Preamp etc.
If all this fails, try The Teac Place http://www.daeinconline.com/index.html
Or this one has some troubleshooting stuff with pictures;
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic2/vintagetx/

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Kimber Kable

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