Sound Advice
New Member
Hello Folks- I've looked for a similar issue here, but I have not seen this exact problem discussed. I acquired a tired Teac X-1000R reel deck a few years back, and I am just now getting around to putting it right. I unfroze the pinch roller assembly and removed all the old grease. Applied new lubrication. Replaced the drive belt and both rubber pinch rollers. Now the deck records and plays in both directions quite well. The remaining problems are the Rewind and Fast-Forward functions. I put on an 1800’ tape and advanced to it have 50% of the tape on each 7” reel. I set both right and left tension levers to midpoint of travel (50%), and then adjusted the metal plates attached to the optical sensing systems so that it gives a 5.1VDC reading on pin 3 of both J106 and J107 (the two outputs of the Tension Sensor Boards). When I put the machine into forward play mode, the left tension lever moves to about 80% of the way up in its travel and gives a 3.77VDC reading. The right tension lever moves to about 80% of the way up and gives a 3.46VDC reading. The tape is playing or recording just fine here without riding up on the heads. Then I stopped the machine and everything stayed as it was (80% of the way up on both tension levers with the tape now stopped; no sag in the tape). Then I pushed the Rewind button, but the tape does not rewind. Instead, the left tension lever sags down to the bottom of its travel, giving an 8.27VDC reading, and the right tension lever sags down to the 20% position and gives a 7.53VDC reading. The tape doesn’t move. I hit Stop, and I manually reset the tension levers to the way they were when the machine was stopped previously after playing (both tension levers at 80% up). This time I hit Fast-Forward. The tape does not fast-forward, and the tension levers sag to the same way they were after I hit Rewind (left one all the way down at 0% and the right one at 20%). The tape doesn’t move at all. What is the fix for this problem? Hopefully someone can fill me in on what to adjust/replace here. The deck plays/records in both directions quite well without the tape riding up on the heads, and I can manually hold up the tension levers and manually get the tape to rewind or fast-forward if I have to, but that’s no way to run a railroad. Thanks for your help, much appreciated!