I posted here last week about just acquiring my first R2R deck (a Sony TC-755A) and although it is in very nice cosmetic condition it didn't sound very good at all. The channels were not even close to being balanced and there was a lot of background noise on both channels. After reading through the service manual I decided to fake most of the adjustments since I don't have the test/allignment tape necessary to do them properly. After going through the record and playback gain adjustments, meter adjustments, and the EQ adjustments several times with a variety of tapes I actually have it sounding pretty good now. I'm sure though that the adjustments are at best "just in the ballpark" from what they should be and I'd like to be able to do them properly.
There was coincidentally enough one of the proper Sony test tapes on eBay last week and I did bid on it, but got outbid by several other buyers and almost 50%. It ended up going for more than a lot of low to mid range R2R decks usually go for. Which leads me (finally) to my main question - where can I get a test tape (Sony or otherwise) that will let me do the adjustments and set the levels properly, without waiting who knows how long for another one to show up on eBay and then paying through the nose for it?
There was coincidentally enough one of the proper Sony test tapes on eBay last week and I did bid on it, but got outbid by several other buyers and almost 50%. It ended up going for more than a lot of low to mid range R2R decks usually go for. Which leads me (finally) to my main question - where can I get a test tape (Sony or otherwise) that will let me do the adjustments and set the levels properly, without waiting who knows how long for another one to show up on eBay and then paying through the nose for it?
