If you zoom in on the picture from my previous post you can see that the
foam tape around the top of the chassis is crumbling away. Today I replaced the foam tape. Be careful when buying the foam tape as some of the materials used in the foams tapes starts to get gooey from about 60 C, which is not really suitable for long term in this unit as it gets warm inside. So check specs on the tape.
Here you can see I've removed the old foam tape and cleaned up with some acetone. I'm not going to lie... this took some elbow grease to remove the old tape and clean it up. I used a plastic tool and finger nails, so as not to scratch up the metal.
Here are the pics with the new foam tape installed.
On the right hand sound of the machine the servo assembly is screwed into the chassis. The original tape was one piece along this edge and you have to break the tape to get at the screws and then everything starts crumbling. In hopes of avoiding that in the future, on the right hand side I cut several piece of tape, so that when you want to remove the servo board in the future you can just remove the two little pieces over the screws and not disturb the rest. Not quite as pretty, but probably more functional in the long term.
I have enough tape to do about ten 707s so my other two 707s will get new foam tape when their turn comes. So I think all that is left is repainting the black case, and then I'm onto the other 707s. I guess i will just continue with those in this same thread. The other two 707s will not get a recap, unless I find issues, but they will be calibrated (one will be kept as a donor machine for sure) and these machines have some issues that might be more interesting than the straight up rebuild done here.
GPS, about the BASF LP 35 tape that didn't record well, that makes sense, because I'm sure I read somewhere it should be very similar to the RMG tapes (I even thought I read RMG uses the same recipe). So I will try the tape on the PR-99 just to be sure the tape is dead and I guess if the tape is no good i will do a tape dump on the PR99 and keep the reels and boxes. I actually have a couple more boxes of that...sealed. I don't have the heart to resell it if I guess it's all bad.
About the PR99, I didn't even do a 15ips record test yet. I stuck to 7.5ips to keep it as fair as possible for the comparison to the 707. That 3dB lower tape hiss sure does make a difference. Can't wait to get stuck into some 15ips. And, I assume the tapes are also less prone to dropouts, since the signal is spread over a larger tape area, right?
Anyway, the foam tape is just a little thing, but sure makes the machine look like new when you take the lid off!