I recently bought an Akai x201d for next to nothing. I love tape and always have and I intentionally want to go down the rabbit hole of inexpensive tape machines in hopes of gaining a greater understanding and appreciation for these machines.
When I brought the deck home the playback and record functions still worked properly. I ordered some 1/4" tape but for now I am operating on used tape.
Once I read through the manual, made sure my voltage and cycle settings were correct, I started to track some drums. At first everything was fine and I was setting up a great sounding mix, then one time when running back and forth from the tape machine and drum kit I noticed my signal had dropped drastically, VU's weren't jumping and the playback was highly distorted and quiet, probably a third of the previous volume. This was after getting a real nice sounding nominal balance with VU's moving and everything working great.
Next thing I took the face plate off, did some deox carefully where I could reach, cleaned heads, double checked fuse and cycle/voltage settings. With everything in place I started jiggling controls to see if there was any result. I noticed that when I set it to Auto shut off mode, engaged the pause switch, and then disengage the pause switch by pressing start, it "seemed" that the voltage would jump and everything was trying to go from quiet and distorted back to regular signal. I repeated this 3 times and it was back to the previous signal. Now It cuts in and out and will not function properly. Both channels are acting the same, I recorded audio onto it and it is at the correct speed.(which means my cycles are set correctly 60hz)
I came home today and fired it up and it worked normally, then after a few plays it went right back to a dirty quiet signal. My hope is that someone reading this already knows what it is and its an obvious signal flow issue. Please forgive my ignorance if this is an obvious fix. My next step would be to start checking caps but I'm scared to open this thing up any more than I have. Sorry for the long winded post, any help is greatly appreciated.
When I brought the deck home the playback and record functions still worked properly. I ordered some 1/4" tape but for now I am operating on used tape.
Once I read through the manual, made sure my voltage and cycle settings were correct, I started to track some drums. At first everything was fine and I was setting up a great sounding mix, then one time when running back and forth from the tape machine and drum kit I noticed my signal had dropped drastically, VU's weren't jumping and the playback was highly distorted and quiet, probably a third of the previous volume. This was after getting a real nice sounding nominal balance with VU's moving and everything working great.
Next thing I took the face plate off, did some deox carefully where I could reach, cleaned heads, double checked fuse and cycle/voltage settings. With everything in place I started jiggling controls to see if there was any result. I noticed that when I set it to Auto shut off mode, engaged the pause switch, and then disengage the pause switch by pressing start, it "seemed" that the voltage would jump and everything was trying to go from quiet and distorted back to regular signal. I repeated this 3 times and it was back to the previous signal. Now It cuts in and out and will not function properly. Both channels are acting the same, I recorded audio onto it and it is at the correct speed.(which means my cycles are set correctly 60hz)
I came home today and fired it up and it worked normally, then after a few plays it went right back to a dirty quiet signal. My hope is that someone reading this already knows what it is and its an obvious signal flow issue. Please forgive my ignorance if this is an obvious fix. My next step would be to start checking caps but I'm scared to open this thing up any more than I have. Sorry for the long winded post, any help is greatly appreciated.