KX-440HX hates chrome cassettes!

[fletchdirect]

Hi,
I've got a Kenwood KX-440HX cassette deck - had it from new when I was about 15 years old (39 now!). My dad bought it for me for christmas - I remember it coming from Hughes in Bury St Edmunds!! It still works perfectly and sounds super stable, but has the same fault it developed all those years ago when it was about 6 months old.
Normal tapes and Metal Tapes work superbly well, but chrome ones not. Having the tape type selector switched to Chrome, irrespective of using Dolby or not and irrespective of what brand of cassettes - it really struggles to record. When you record and play it back, high frequencies sound distorted and the record level sinks to about 1/3 of what it was when recorded. As said, other tapes work fine and it plays back chrome cassettes recorded on other decks fine.
I've suffered this fault for all these years and have been through many other cassette decks in my time, but I'd like to know what's behind this fault and if there was an easy fix. Any ideas?
Many thanks in advance
Cheers
Julian

 

[Bockie]

Hi,
I've got a Kenwood KX-440HX cassette deck - had it from new when I was about 15 years old (39 now!). My dad bought it for me for christmas - I remember it coming from Hughes in Bury St Edmunds!! It still works perfectly and sounds super stable, but has the same fault it developed all those years ago when it was about 6 months old.
Normal tapes and Metal Tapes work superbly well, but chrome ones not. Having the tape type selector switched to Chrome, irrespective of using Dolby or not and irrespective of what brand of cassettes - it really struggles to record. When you record and play it back, high frequencies sound distorted and the record level sinks to about 1/3 of what it was when recorded. As said, other tapes work fine and it plays back chrome cassettes recorded on other decks fine.
I've suffered this fault for all these years and have been through many other cassette decks in my time, but I'd like to know what's behind this fault and if there was an easy fix. Any ideas?
Many thanks in advance
Cheers
Julian

There are tapes branded as 'position high', and lookalike CrO2, eaven the color of tape is darker, and they are in fact - NOT CrO2 tapes! I have the same deck, and had the same situation. You record those tapes in 'normal position'.
There's no manual bias setting on this machine, but it's connected to tape type switch, where it's not only the EQ that is in given position but different bias also.
So, the tape must have strictly written CrO2 properties and not just 'position high' or so.
Those last, you just treat as 'normal position' tapes and recordings will be fine, with nice sharp highs...
Excellent machine, tank mechanics inside, very good sound.
Cheers!