Some TEAC and AKAI Reel player Questions

[jackson]

Hello, Today I found a TEAC A-1250S and an AKAI 1730D-SS pretty exciteing as I haven't found any audio equipment for a long time. I use to have a TEAC A- 6300 & A-4300 I had to sell them when I moved. How closely related is the A-1250S ? It looks like it might have the same 3 motor design. The AKAI looks like a one motor design, so I was curious how hard it is to put new belts in it. The capstan roller is dented because some genius left it set on play. The TEAC doesn't have a power cord,don't know if it's a special one or not.
Thanks Jackson

 

[audiojones]

The TEAC is by far the better of those two machines IMO. It is closely related to the other TEAC decks in terms of build quality and performance. It’s a nice auto-reverse 3 motor 4 head machine with 2 individual playback heads (one for forward and one for reverse) and an unusual combination erase and record head (they are two separate heads of course but they are built into the same structure). This was a very good head configuration and one that I wish TEAC had kept using when they made their reversing A-2300R decks instead of going with the cheaper method of using the 4 channel playback head from the 2340 series decks.

Anyway, the power cord is basically just a standard 2 prong non-polarized extension cord if you have an old one laying around. I used to plug one of those old fashioned 3 way power cubes into the TEAC socket and then use any old extension cord to plug into the cube. You can also buy them on feebay, there’s always someone selling them if you can’t come up with something.

Only thing to watch out for (other than the usual sticky pinch roller linkage which this probably has) is that direction lever switch. Don’t shift it while the machine is running if you can avoid it because it wears the contacts out due to the arcing. If you stop the machine first then shift the lever it sees a much lighter electrical load and will last longer.

The Akai is a single motor machine, it does have separate record and play heads which is good and the belt isn’t hard to do IIRC.

 

[JH Magnecord]

The Teac is the better of those two but, that particular Akai model was a good starter into the 4-channel Quadraphonic novelty.