My least favorite thing about old black electronic rubber belts is when they melt. It turns into a very messy paste. They have the consistency of a soft stick of butter. Nice job by the way.
A quick tip. If you get it on your fingers, go get some baby oil ( you know the stuff you put on a baby's butt to sooth diaper rash) and rub it all over your hands then wash them with soap and water and that black mess on your hands will wash right off. I learned about this from a roofer. They use it to remove roofing tar from their skin, and it works better than anything else I have ever tried without using harsh chemicals or solvents. I keep a bottle under the sink for when my hands get grimy.
@@12voltvids Thanks for the tip. I was not aware of the baby oil trick. I usually just use a small amount of rubbing alcohol but i will try that one of these days 😉.
That cheap cassette somehow made it to Canada from Germany. Universum was a brand of the German mail order company Quelle. The original label that is under the Universum label is by Permaton, an obscure company that was based in West Berlin. They never made their own tapes, instead they put BASF or AGFA tape into their cassettes. Despite this, their cassettes were never very good.
Maybe they used rejected tapes, that were failed the QC of the original manufacturer. Here in Hungary, a brand called Polimer has done the same thing. They advertised on the packaging that they use BASF tape. They were usually OK, except some bad batches. During their early years in the early '70s, the quality of the cassette shells was problematic, either they warped over a short period of time, or they were warped to begin with, and the spool often seized. With their reel to reel tapes, the problem usually was that they cut them too wide, so they stuck and warped between the tape guides. But that was quite rare.
@@mrnmrn1 It's very well possible that the tape Permaton used was rejected at the BASF and AGFA factories, especially since they never advertised that they used brand name tape. Maybe that was the deal, they got rejected tape for cheap but couldn't mention where they got it from. Especially Permaton cassettes loaded with AGFA tape were terrible.
wish i'd have kept my old tapes. i had probably 100+ that were all name brand high bias and metal tapes that i threw out like 10 years ago. i was big into recording music off the radio and other places. i could've given them to you
Big Thanks! This vid just saved a TC-RX50 with the same mech. The belt had completely perished, so no idea of the original belt path and to top it off the service manual doesn't show the full belt path and what is shown is wrong!
I miss the pioneer tape recorder player with sliding draw when I was converting to mini disc untill CDRs was available then upgrade to 6 album MP3 CD or 1 film, 6 films on DVD 😀 good video
Thanks for all so many of your well done, instructional and detailed videos. They have been helpful as I slowly learn more about repairing stereo gear. I actually just stumbled across the exact tape deck, Sony TC-RX400, which I'm going to add to my assortment of gear. I do need to replace the belt as it was broken. Could you recommend from where I could order a capstan (square belt) for the RX400? And...how important is it that the replacement belt be an exact size match? Is it ok to use a flat belt instead? Thanks again.
Great job! Nice simple well playing deck. Always nice to see here new video’s on youre channel. I’ve been working last days on a Sony TC-K620. Placing the new belts and clean it up. Now the deck plays for 2 sec and stops... also doing that with rewinding. Rewind 2 sec. and stops... Fast forward no problem. Maybe tips? Thx.
4 года назад
What a process to change the belts on that Sony. You said it was easy but way too many steps to just do that. Thanks for the educational video.. I have a NAD which will have to be fixed through a similar process.. and it has 3 belts.
I had something interesting happen. A belt that operates fast forward and rewind in a circa 1990 GE AM FM tape recorder just seemed to disappear. I have had this unit since new and never opened it that I recall. It's the one with the tape recorder to the left of the speaker and tuning dial to the top. You have likely seen the model before.
Just found this video after ordering a replacement belt for my TC rx400! It saved the unit from the trash. But, where exactly is the speed adjust? On the motor itself or on the board?
Thanks so much for this awesome video! For some reason i can't engage the forward play to rotate the correct reel. It rotates the left reel counter clockwise but the right reel doesn't move. Reverse play works and so does FF and RW. Any idea? Thanks Edited: It works now. One of the gear didn't rotate UPWARDS when it was supposed to.
20:32 - Almost an f-bomb, haha. Dental pick, oh my; last night I'd have needed one, because I had some "fun" time with putting the belt back into place on my JVC UX-T150 auto reverse deck. Many little engineering trollings in there to make it next to an impossible task. :T Like an idler pulley just next to the motor pulley, for no obvious reason, and other bits and bobs placed right into the way.
That's probably due to the fact that the deck does not have any kind of bias adjustment. On a high quality 3-head decj with calibration and bias adjustment, Type I cassettes can sound just as good as Type IIs.
As always great vid. The brand "universum" was a brand owned by Quelle AG a quite large German store. But they didn't make their own cassettes. Terribly sounding universum cassette imho. I wonder how this cassette ended up in Canada. AFAIK Quelle didn't export stuff.
I have had stuff from the youtube music library come back and bite me years later when they were removed and no longer royalty free. RU-vid even has a blurb about it. that says basically "yeah that happens sucks to be you".
Dave, the old Universum cassette claims it's Ferrochrome, which is Type III, and not supported by your deck, so it wasn't a fair comparison. By the way, the colour of the tape looks suspiciously similar to regular ferric tapes... On ferrochrome, the chrome layer is the upper one, so it should look black, like a CrO2 tape. So it's either fake, or the chromedioxide layer is so thin that it's translucent.
It's not a fe-cr tape. It is a standard ferric oxide. The only companys that made real fe-cr tape was DuPont agfa and Sony. I have many Sony and you are right they have a chrome layer on top. Brown on bottom, Black on the top. Sorry for any confusion with a porn title.
@@12voltvids LOL, yeah, I'm confused :) . I think BASF also made FeCr tapes. We had a cassette brand here in Hungary, named Polimer, and they advertisedly used BASF tapes (non-advertisedly QC-rejected BASF tapes...) in their cassettes and on their reel-to-reel reels, and they had true FeCr cassettes as well. And this took well into the mid '80s, maybe they bought up the remaining old FeCr tape stock from BASF after they discontinued Type III tapes.
That tape has approximately 2000 passes on it. Perhaps more. It ran with music on hold for 6 months at a the shop I worked at. 10 hours a day 90 minute tape. I made the tapes at home, music with announcements of the shop hours ect. We left it running all day when the shop was open in an auto reverse gheto blaster with the headphone jack plugged into the phone system.
Hello. Hey I got a question. With unit on no input there is 2 bars registering on the vu meters. Is there a way of adjusting or nulling the meters to zero? I mean the bar graph meters.
Have you fixed any Nakamichi Tape Decks? I have a Model 480 where the door is jammed and I can't seem to get open. Do you have any suggestions. I live in New York. Thank you.
@@12voltvids Don't laugh but we had Turkish Angora cat that was deaf - no joke. My mother found it in the bushes while taking a walk. Somehow because the genes that produce pure white fur and blue eyes make them susceptible to be deafness from the birth. I was a beautiful a cat, funny as I could use vacuum cleaner and he wouldn't hear a thing - not good for real life survival of the animal. Since we had two other cats at home, we gave it away to Persian Carleton U students and after seeing them a week later and asking how is the cat, I heard from them - the cat is deaf. Wow, how can it be, so I investigated. I love the look of the Armenian Van cat - the 'swimming' cousin of Turkish Angora, at least that's what the Armenians told me.
@@12voltvids No way, coincidence? Too bad I no longer have contact the Iranian girl that took the cat - it was some 15 years ago. Anyway, I hope the animal lived good life. Now I sometimes cat sit my neighbours long haired cat - I'm the only person other than her that Pinkers seems to accept - temperamental character he is.
I really need the proper equipment to calibrate speed. For years I've been syncing tape deck speeds with an album I have on cassette and CD. I cue up the same tracks and adjust the tape speed so it matches the sound coming from the CD. Ridiculous, right? Not to mention time consuming.
Alex in UK sells excellent alignment tapes made on moded Revox deck. You can find him on tapeheads.org tape deck forum. I would get the universal alignment cassette from him. Also W&F meter program for Windows is available on his site.
@@12voltvids Or find someone who has good 3header deck direct drive eg JVC TD-V series and make a alignment tape. My TD-V 541 after more than 15 years was still bang on at 3k -1Hz. I could do tape for speed calibration but have to fix my Nak to perfection first. Some Sony with direct drive have speed adjustment so +/-10Hz on 3k would be normal. But JVCs were exceptional at maintaining tape speed - no adjustment.
@@pliedtka I use a Technics RSM275. This is a direct drive quartz lock 2 head deck, and it can perform very, very close to a 3 head deck. Many people, including myself agree that this deck records literally identical to 3 head decks. I have 3 3 head decks, a Technics and a Teac, and I think this one sounds better. 3 heads were definately better when it cam to reel to reel decks, but the problem with 3 heads on a cassette deck was the space. On a cassette the pressure pad is relatively small, and when you stick 2 heads in there side by side, the center of the pressure pad is actually centered between the 2 heads. A 2 head deck on the other hand has the head gap centered so it gets maximum contact. dual capstan decks sort of solved this problem by having the left capstan add a little drag to the tape to increase tension slightly so that good contact is made. You can see a problem created by this approach though. Tape stretching. Personally I was never a fan of dual capstan anything. All it takes in uneven wear of the pinch rollers and you have a tape eating machine. mmmmm, tape.
@@12voltvids Had problems with tape going to the side on the TD-V541 dual capstan 3header, but only a few tapes were affected. I somehow managed to fix it by decreasing left pinch roller contact force, I think. Anyway for dual capstan precision has to be there to function correctly - my Nak never ate any tapes, but also lifts the pad under the tape - you know all that. If the cassette in 1960s was ever to implement such advanced technology like dual capstan and 3 heads, most likely Philips would design something more appropriate - we have what we have. Really, I wish that in the beginning they would use 1/4" wide tape and a bit bigger shell for hi-fi decks - Sony El cassette comes to mind, but smaller.
@@12voltvids DBX - Technics a few others like it. Dolby, hmmm, some decks sound awful with C. Oh, I wish the Telefunken Hi-Com was available in chip form when it was introduced - supposedly less breathing than C. From many decks there aren't too many that were really good with C. Even B decoded tapes played on other decks have the problem. Stinking Dolby..... and playback curves
Smashing job dave, well worth doing ;-D A bit wobbly on the speed but a nice usable machine for ordinary use. The worst tape ive found was a tandy low noise tape, but you get low record volume as well and crap audio quality. A pointless product that vanished very quickly, no supprise lol.
hi i deal in cassette tape the tape in side cassette there's alot of left over about in the far east somewhere when they have cassette that don't sell they reuse them one thing there sp lp dp kinds of pancake tape sp is for c60 max lp is for c90 max dp is for c120 max i know i can get sp pancake only now in the uk i have a OTARI DP2700 to put in the tape the price of cassette parts is very high i buy what i call 2nd re- jets cassette and fix them up the weld cassette there's ways around them i have a fishing wire i can put in to pull the leaders out easy once you know
I do have some blank tapes in good shape and a calibrated technics deck with direct drive capstan to record on. It has probably only about 100 hours of time on it as I used it just to play the odd tape to record onto my computer.
I take a lot of heat about using light machine/sewing machine oil as well. The Technics fans swear by the oem oil and say it's blasphemy to use any thing but it in turntable bearings. They seem to forget that these bearings don't get hot and only spin at 33 rpm (or whatever it is in a cassette deck). Just ridiculous audiophoolery.
I have gotten in arguments with these phools that spend 1000 on a gold plated oxygen free copper patch cord manufactured by virgins in a dust free clean room. It's a mental condition, you can't fix stupid. Here is the thing, dumb people don't know they are dumb but for the rest of us, we figure it out as soon as they open their mouth or touch a keyboard. You can't fix the condition so don't even try. Remember they don't know how redecules they sound so just nod and agree and then laugh your ass off as soon as they are out of ear shot.
I only use 0w-20 full synthetic from left overs in empty Toyota or Honda oil bottles after oil change;) But now I got the idea for.... MoS2 Liquid Molly car oil - might be extra slippery with with that Molybdenum
@@12voltvids Actually take more as a joke. Although the Pennzoil Ultra, Shell Helix is a very good oil made from gas, passes C2/C3 Euro specs. Others like Motul use esters as the base. Honda, Toyota is probably made by Idemitsu, Enoes - very good product. Anyway don't use Crappy Tire synthetic - it makes the crank, cam seals leak. On other hand I know Revox-Studer used special synthetic oil for capstans, but it's NLA. So would, say, synthetic oil used for sawing machines be OK?
@@pliedtka "Crappy Tire" synthetic oil is manufactured by Shell Canada and Citgo - it is high quality oil. I've used it for ages - never a problem and never a leak or seal issue. As long as oil meets the API rating, it is 100% fine. Buy what's on sale and what is recommended in your owner's manual for viscosity - and most most important - change it as per your manual. I've seen Toyota and Honda engines go 400,000-500,000 kms on regular, non-synthetic oil changes. As far as turntable bearings go, Dave is 100% correct - engine oil has additives that are completely not needed and are made for combustion engines. Simple electric motor oil is all that you need in a turntable bearing. Rega actually uses Shell Spirax or Castrol EPX 80W90 hypoid gear oil in their turntable bearings.
Yes, and no since depending on the machine. In Pro R2R decks some tapes are made for specific EQ curve and to provide low distortions. In cassette decks the best ones also allow for sensitivity calibration, but a very few machines could change the recording EQ curve. In 1982 (Prague IEC conference), if remember correctly, the 120usec playback EQ standard was changed to something more like 130-135usec to allow for lower saturation at high frequencies when the Dolby NR became standard on most good quality decks. That's also a reason why later Nakamichi machines say DR series sound a bit different when playing tapes made on something like LX series. Nakamichi I think is the only company that issued some sort of update to address the change in playback EQ standard for some of their decks - seriousness of the company in my point of view.
Hahaha. Bias tone control. Right. Bias sets the record current to drive different magnetic formulations of tape. Try recording on a previously recorded metal tape with the bias set to normal and let me know the results.
@@12voltvids Bias Normal ? rotary + & - settings . In practices , turn bias UP less treble , more bass . Yes they are all different , tats why its there . The TEX above is for those who have stranded decks without bias setting . Equalizer always sort it out by listening & not meassering it . YT CH Cassette Comeback confirms bias " IS " a tone contral . VU record level makes all the difference for distortion , ruin the recording else
@@pliedtka Yes , I hoe to get a Dragon or a 3 Head at least . I do a lot of recordings of Club tracks DJ MIX since it took off . With decks this GOOD its all clean . I never liked the Dolby cut-off , I like the treble extension for the atmosphere
@@shaun9107 Well, 30 years ago I listened to tape decks with tapes recorded in Dolby B with the switch in OFF position because most decks lack highs during playback. The truth is that even 3 header will roll the highs past 15kHz - has to do playback head gap being to wide for the speed of the tape. Remember that in 1963 Philips never meant the cassette to be used as Hi-Fi source, it's a sort of a miracle that they were able to squeeze so much out of 3.81mm wide piece of tape. And forget about the Dragon - nice it is but impossible to repair once something goes wrong. I would rather search for DirectDrive capstan motor with Amorphous heads. TEAC (Tascam), Sony, JVC. The Tascam had Pro 3head that were work horse machines, that also run at twice the speed. I think for DJ work you want reliability over fancy - other things things you polish on DAW. On the other hand why not do everything on DAW, with the computing power available today I don't think I would invest in 40 year technology. And don't tell it's because analog sounds better or some other BS, unless you like the distortions and limitations it produces. Yeah, actually I have 1 or 2 cassettes left with 12" DJ mixes from mid '80, kind of interesting Hi- energy dance that miraculously survived - I transferred them to HD not to wear the tape further, it barely played back in acceptable form.
