fast help on rt-909

pqrannes

Tubes warm your heart too
The boy scouts' flea market just got me Pioneer RT-909 reel2reel machine with 5-6 big reels and a manual.

It lights up nice, no problems with fast forward and reverse. But 'play' (both directions) is troublesome. The central motor doesn’t seem to be able to pull the tape thru.

Can I “clean” this away, does it need a new band or/and pinch rollers (seen on the web at 68 USD a pair, that’s more that I paid for the rest!)? Or is it worse?

Peter
Denmark
 
Last edited:
"Can I “clean” this away, does it need a new band or/and pinch rollers "
Cant say for sure but this would be the thing to do first before replacing
any parts.
 
Clean the heads, guides and capstan with Isopropyl Alcohol until no residue comes off. If the stuff that comes off is black, you may have some bad tape that is decomposing and sticking to the heads. This can actually cause the machine to stop dead in play. If you see the black residue, examine your tapes to see if any are Ampex. If so, don't use that tape. Ampex had some bad tape that decompose and get sticky. This deck has a direct drive capstan and it is unlikely that anything could go wrong with it that would make it not play.
 
The capstans are driven by a belt from one single motor. Belt will stretch and become sticky after a few years. Open the top cover and inspect this. New belts can be found from various sources. Also the old reels of tape may also be sticking to themselves on the reels. I have experienced this before. Throw out any that is sticking in any way. If they are on good reels just unspool the tape and chunk it and save your reels for fresh tape. The reed switches on these will also cause you problems if they start to go bad. They affect FF,REW and or Play. The two are located one each at the large rotating tape guides. When you trun the right one full right it locks into place and engages the switch and turns off the capstan motor. The same applies to the left switch only rotating in counterclockwise motion. It locks into place engaging the other switch and so and and so forth. :D
 
Thanks

:banana: Thanks to everyone.
The isopropyl alcohol took a lot of residue (a really thick layer). The reed switches and all seems to function. But the reels still turn slowly or don't turn at all.

But the problem is definitely the drive belt (the motor is still running nice while both wheels inside the belt don’t move). I’ll get a belt and figure how to change it.
 
Now up and running

:thmbsp: Thanks a new drive belt from Bob T. in Colorado Springs, US postal and the tip I saw somewhere suggesting that Pioneer long time-not-touched screws are to be loosened by a nice smack by e.g. a rubber hammer at the end of the appropriate screw driver my RT-909 is up and running.

Peter, Denmark
 
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