thataway that a friend and mentor of mine (Jerry) had passed away, early last month. When I was helping his family uninstall and pack up the radio gear they were going to donate to our city ARES group, I noticed that Jerry's living-room stereo system included a nice-looking reel-to-reel tape deck. I'd just recently learned of a reason to have one such - my wife found a bunch of her old reel-to-reel tapes, including some of her "in concert" during her high school and college years - and I want to retrieve the performances and digitize them before the tapes deteriorate any further. My last (and only prior) reel-to-reel deck died decades ago, so I need one now.I told Jerry's brother I was interested in checking out the deck and probably purchasing it, if nobody had called "dibs" on it. Last week he asked me to come over and inspect it, and made me an initial "if it's working properly" offer that was very generous. It's a Pioneer RT-707, a very popular and well-thought-of 7" deck built in the late 1970s.
My tests determined that it was only half-working - fast forward and rewind worked OK, but in "play" the tape wouldn't budge - the capstan and pinch roller were locked up tight. I couldn't test the playback and record electronics. The heads, fortunately, showed very little wear. I described the situation to Jerry's brother, and said I thought there was a decent chance I could find and repair the problems and do the sort of refurbishment that a mechanical component like this needs after a few decades. He said his original price "wouldn't be fair" since the deck wasn't working, and asked me what I wanted to pay. I offered him 2/3 of his original price for it "as is, with problems", and he immediately accepted.
I'm glad to have it. I'd have been gladder if Jerry were still around to have it.
I spent a bunch of time with it over the weekend. So far, so good. The "won't play" problem turned out to be two separate problems. For starters, the pinch roller and its tape-tension arm were almost "glued in place" by the old lubricant... it had turned into something very much like cement over the years of non-use. I was able to carefully disassemble that part of the mechanism, and clean and re-lubricate the bushings... free rotation restored. The pinch-roller tire was glazed and somewhat dried out, but cleaning and some Rubber Renu restored it well enough for testing (I have a new tire "on order" via eBay).
Then, the capstan motor itself wasn't working properly - low torque and low speed. This was apparently due to a common problem with this model - dirty switch/potentiometer contacts, and/or tarnished pins and connector on the wiring harness between the motor and the servo board. I cleaned them all carefully with DeOxIt, and the motor is back to full strength.
At this point I could test it, and it actually works! At least, it was able to play back one of my wife's tapes, and the tape sounded good on my headphones.
More to do - I need to lubricate the reel-drive motor bushings (if the motors are of the vintage which have a lubrication access hole), clean and grease a bunch of the mechanical linkages, and work on the reel brakes a bit (the supply reel brake seems to be slipping a bit). A capstan-motor speed check is also called for. When I get the new "tire" I'll cut the old one off of the roller bushings and mount the new one, and then check the pinch-roller pressure adjustment. The turns counter doesn't work; the only rubber belt in this model is a very thin one which connects the supply reel to the counter, and not surprisingly it's broken. New one on order.
The really good news is that I went through all of Gwen's tapes, looked at the tape brands and type numbers, and concluded that none of them were likely to be subject to "Sticky Shed Syndrome" which seems to affect only the pro-grade "back coated" tapes. That's going to make the job of playing the tapes and digitizing them both easier and safer.
So, I'm not far away from being able to hook it to my analog-to-digital converter, play a tape, and capture the data to disc for editing and preservation.
