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Tandberg TCD330 tape skew problems

TellMeWhy

TellMeWhy

Active Member
I recently bought a Tandberg TCD330, seemingly in excellent condition. The seller told me the unit had been recapped, cleaned and lubricated around 3 years ago by a top local audio technician and then shortly afterwards calibrated and aligned by Tandberg Zentral Service in Germany. I have the receipt for the 2nd service, and absolutely no reason to doubt the seller's word.

The deck's been in regular service since then. It sounds great and technically performs extremely well- in fact measured W&F figures are well under the specified tolerances.

The one problem is that it is very picky with tapes. Some tapes play just fine, but others, it skews and crunches (without actually producing a spaghetti mess). You can hear the sound of crinkling tape as this is happening... :-(

I have thoroughly cleaned the tape path with IPA and the in addition treated the rollers with rubber renew. The pinch rollers hit the capstans together and with enough pressure, and the roller rubber seems to be in good condition.

To be honest, some of my tapes have been stored the last 10 months in a very warm attic room, and none of them haven been used for 2-3 years. It seems (predictably) that pre-recorded tapes play best, and C100's have the worst chances of success.

I have tried FF / REW several times and a play through both sides before attempting recording. I have also done the "tap / shake" thing on the tapes in between operations.

Some tapes play great, others skew, success rate is about 50/50. And once they've skewed in a particular place, they always skew there. Once they have made it all the way through without skewing, they perform 100% fine.

Does anyone have any ideas how to get all tapes to play, or do I simply need to look towards new or NOS tapes? Are the Tandberg's known to be tape fussy?
 
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Yes, these decks are fussy and some tapes seem to always cause skew resulting in the tape being scrunched. The rollers need to be in nearly perfect condition and the rest of the mechanics dialed in as well. If you have wear in the capstan bushings, which is not unusual given 1) they run anytime the deck is on, not just when the heads are engaged and 2) the option for vertical operation of the deck which puts a lot of load/wear on one side of the bushings, it's very difficult to resolve the skewing problem.

There was a mod to improve back tension on some models too, but I'd have to check on whether that applies to the 330 or not. Had to do with moving the belt for the tape counter to the other side.

You might post the same question on Tapeheads.net, should get some useful feedback there as well as info on a seller in Europe that has good (new) rollers.

John
 
TellMeWhy said:
I recently bought a Tandberg TCD330, seemingly in excellent condition. The seller told me the unit had been recapped, cleaned and lubricated around 3 years ago by a top local audio technician and then shortly afterwards calibrated and aligned by Tandberg Zentral Service in Germany. I have the receipt for the 2nd service, and absolutely no reason to doubt the seller's word.

The deck's been in regular service since then. It sounds great and technically performs extremely well- in fact measured W&F figures are well under the specified tolerances.

The one problem is that it is very picky with tapes. Some tapes play just fine, but others, it skews and crunches (without actually producing a spaghetti mess). You can hear the sound of crinkling tape as this is happening... :-(

I have thoroughly cleaned the tape path with IPA and the in addition treated the rollers with rubber renew. The pinch rollers hit the capstans together and with enough pressure, and the roller rubber seems to be in good condition.

To be honest, some of my tapes have been stored the last 10 months in a very warm attic room, and none of them haven been used for 2-3 years. It seems (predictably) that pre-recorded tapes play best, and C100's have the worst chances of success.

I have tried FF / REW several times and a play through both sides before attempting recording. I have also done the "tap / shake" thing on the tapes in between operations.

Some tapes play great, others skew, success rate is about 50/50. And once they've skewed in a particular place, they always skew there. Once they have made it all the way through without skewing, they perform 100% fine.

Does anyone have any ideas how to get all tapes to play, or do I simply need to look towards new or NOS tapes? Are the Tandberg's known to be tape fussy?
Click to expand...

I'd guess rubber. Some units just won't play right without really good rubber. If the roller/s haven't been replaced before, that would be my bet, regardless of how they appear to be. Cheers.
 
Thanks guys. The rubber on the take up pinch roller definitely does have a slight shine to it compared to that of the feed roller. I can imagine that if there's any slipping on the take up roller, the tape tension will goto sh*t and the tape will skew. I will contact TSZ in Germany and / or look into changing the rollers. The Service Bulletin 11.1.1978 can also make sense to try:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.sportsbil.com/tandberg/tcd-330--misc.pdf
Cheers, Jon
 
It isn't just the surface, but the shape as well.

Look for mikohm's post over on TH mentioning his availability for Tandberg rollers - they work very nicely and are new, not NOS where the rubber may have hardened or changed shape over the years. Avoid revox.de (eBay user) rollers, they're not particularly reliable based on numerous user comments over the years.

John
 
Mihokm offers the left (source) pinch roller on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/143350515543?hash=item21605b4757:g:dbEAAOSwTaFdTIUi You could send him a message to see if he can supply the right (take-up) pinch roller. He also has numerous current listings on www.ebay.de which include these pinch rollers where you can contact him as a seller. There is another seller in Germany that offers a complete set of new pinch rollers with shim washers https://www.ebay.com/itm/165619040733?hash=item268faa01dd:g:OqwAAOSwZXhi8k9U
 
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No? I may have missed something on that... he did also have a web site and an eBay store, or at least listings on eBay.de IIRC. I don't see any listings as of now, though. Ask some of the other folks active from Europe for sourcing info, a number of them are also Tandberg owners.

John
 
John - You may not be finding him because his member/seller name is mihokm, not mikohm. See my edited post above.
 
I wasn't looking actually (it was the OP that searched based on my erroneous recollection of his username there), but thanks for the correction.

BTW I would never recommend that other seller based on the # of people (including me) that have found those rollers to perform very poorly more often than not. I've got some upstairs that will never get into a deck because they are so bad, unlike the ones mihokm was offering. I'll either use those or have Terry re-rubber the originals if they don't have any wobble on the shafts (assuming he's still providing that service, haven't gone looking since his bout with COVOD and subsequent web/IT issues).

John
 
@TellMeWhy , I bought both a 330 and 440A new back in the day. The 330 was usually pretty trouble free, but the 440A after a couple of years would perform the exact skew problems you described. there are two things that need to be done.

1. Clean or replace the pinch rollers.
2. if that does not clear it up, you will need to replace the bearings on the capstan shafts.

I had item 2 performed by Tandberg service 3x times. Each time I would get about a 2 years of service from the deck before the problem repeated.
 
mcgjohn said:
I had item 2 performed by Tandberg service 3x times. Each time I would get about a 2 years of service from the deck before the problem repeated.
Click to expand...

Wow-that's bad. Most capstan bearings last decades. I have never heard of needing to replace them on a cassette deck, until now.
 
@mcgjohn, thanks for your helpful reply. I previously had another tcd330 that after 3 years needed another service, although in that case is was most likely my fault as the deck was mostly left standing.
The capstan bearing shafts have very little play, and seem fine.
As the previous owner swears this deck never had this problem, and since acquiring it I have played quite a few old tapes, and cleaned the pinch rollers more than usual, perhaps the roller rubber had simply come to the end of its useful lifespan

mcgjohn said:
@TellMeWhy , I bought both a 330 and 440A new back in the day. The 330 was usually pretty trouble free, but the 440A after a couple of years would perform the exact skew problems you described. there are two things that need to be done.

1. Clean or replace the pinch rollers.
2. if that does not clear it up, you will need to replace the bearings on the capstan shafts.

I had item 2 performed by Tandberg service 3x times. Each time I would get about a 2 years of service from the deck before the problem repeated.
Click to expand...
 
TellMeWhy said:
@mcgjohn, thanks for your helpful reply. I previously had another tcd330 that after 3 years needed another service, although in that case is was most likely my fault as the deck was mostly left standing.
The capstan bearing shafts have very little play, and seem fine.
As the previous owner swears this deck never had this problem, and since acquiring it I have played quite a few old tapes, and cleaned the pinch rollers more than usual, perhaps the roller rubber had simply come to the end of its useful lifespan
Click to expand...


You are welcome. That could be true. These decks are old enough now, they likely need new pinch rollers. May be a good place to start. Check with Terry's Rubber rollers and see if he does replacements or knows of someone who does.
His main focus is on reel to reel decks.

Even with all the troubles I had, the Tandbergs are really nice sounding decks. The only deck that could compete with them was the NAK Dragon. The Tandberg 3014 deck supposedly cleared up all the design issues the earlier models had, but I never bought one so can't offer any insight into them.
 
I've got a few 440A's and they work fine w/o having ever replaced the capstan bushings. But, I don't leave them running in the vertical position for days on end either.

John
 
jdurbin1 said:
I've got a few 440A's and they work fine w/o having ever replaced the capstan bushings. But, I don't leave them running in the vertical position for days on end either.

John
Click to expand...

thanks for the note. When I had mine, they were always used vertically. So not sure if horizontal use would have helped that or not.
 
It does, at least in my experience. Using the deck vertically applies all of the suspended weight of the flywheel/capstan assembly to one side of the bronze capstan bushings which can wear more and allow the shafts to wobble/not meet the rollers in perfect alignment. Used horizontally the bushing has uniform loading around the circumference so it takes a lot more hours of use to wear out. Of course, in either case if the absorbed lube in the sintered bronze dries out over time, you risk that kind of damage.

But, many (most? possibly) people did use these decks vertically and Tandberg intended that they be able to operate that way, not sure they were looking this many years down the road in the process.

John
 
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