I am working on an old Realistic 999 Reel-to-Reel 3-head tape deck. It is more of a project for fun than it is a serious restoration project. To put things in perspective, when I received the deck it would not run because one of the idler wheels on the motor shaft had completely disintegrated. I was able to get if running again by fitting a garden hose washer on the shaft and shaving it down a bit. (Hey, remember, it's just an old Realistic - and this is supposed to be a fun project.) Mechanically it works fine for now so I was able to proceed to testing the audio performance. The results are not so good. Even after cleaning all of the switches and controls, both VU meters pegged to the right and the audio was barely audible. Injecting tones at the head leads gave me a few hints. I disconnected the leads to one channel and the other channel suddenly began to play normally, or at least reasonably so. Swapping leads and channels on the head confirmed that one channel of the head is bad and the other one is OK, not great, but OK. All three heads are badly worn. This is obviously a very high mileage machine that has served someone for a lot of years so there is no shame in that.
By the way, I have a handful of miscelleanous tape heads but none are close enough to be worth trying. I measured the coil resistance of each channel on the old head and found it to be 60 Ohms. That seemed odd to me but I don't have a lot of experience with tape heads. Most of the other similar heads measured about 450 Ohms. Is it likely that 60 Ohms is normal?
I had one of these 999s back when they were new so this thing would be fun to have in working order again. I think this thing is salvageable if I can find a replacement playback head, or a set if I can find them at a reasonable cost. It's not as if this thing is a 1965 Mustang and the cost of "restoration" is not important. The last time that I replaced a R2R tape head was many years ago and OEM replacement parts were cheap and plentiful. Not so much now. I have checked all of my bookmarked sources and searched AK as well as general searches with Google but have not been able to find a source for tape heads. And, wouldn't you know it, the local Radio Shack didn't have any in stock.
If anyone can point me in the right direction where I can find replacement heads for this thing I sure will appreciate it.
Thanks!
By the way, I have a handful of miscelleanous tape heads but none are close enough to be worth trying. I measured the coil resistance of each channel on the old head and found it to be 60 Ohms. That seemed odd to me but I don't have a lot of experience with tape heads. Most of the other similar heads measured about 450 Ohms. Is it likely that 60 Ohms is normal?
I had one of these 999s back when they were new so this thing would be fun to have in working order again. I think this thing is salvageable if I can find a replacement playback head, or a set if I can find them at a reasonable cost. It's not as if this thing is a 1965 Mustang and the cost of "restoration" is not important. The last time that I replaced a R2R tape head was many years ago and OEM replacement parts were cheap and plentiful. Not so much now. I have checked all of my bookmarked sources and searched AK as well as general searches with Google but have not been able to find a source for tape heads. And, wouldn't you know it, the local Radio Shack didn't have any in stock.
If anyone can point me in the right direction where I can find replacement heads for this thing I sure will appreciate it.
Thanks!
