The JVC, my first 8-track

I possess one JVC 8-track player, the JVC ED-1240, a very nice and featureful deck.

The main reason I am interested into the 8-track world is, of course, the fact that aside from 4 track reel to reel tape, this is the only format that has discrete quadraphonic. I realise that the quality of the sound is not up to par like the Studer, or even a normal tape deck, but it will have to do 🙂

The first time I heard this 8-track deck i was very disappointed with the sound. So I found myself a challenge at hand. I have cleaned it, repaired it, refurbished the motor, changed the belt, demagnetized it, changed all the caps on the power board etc. etc. and eventually it performs quite well.

tapes

I cleaned and repadded the 8-track cassettes that I have. I even found it necessary to lube the inside axis a little bit to prevent squeaking and to lower the rumbling and the mechanical noises from the cassettes while playing. The end result is quite pleasing I must say.

But there are still some issues with the player, so if anyone has the schematics, or the service manual, please contact me!

Quadraphonic 8-track

But this post is not about this deck. The JVC is just stereo. This post is about a new one I just bought. A few weeks ago I ran, quite to my surprise, into a quadraphonic 8-track player from National Panasonic, the RS-845us.

Here it can be seen on top of my JVC. At the moment the picture was taken, it was playing a quad tape as you can see by the ‘4 channel’ indicator light. In this mode there are only 2 programs, not 4 as you would find with a stereo tape.

problems ahead

But, alas, this player also came with its problems. I tested it before I bought it, and it was ok as far as I could test it at the time. Coming home, when I could test it for a longer period, I found the same issues I had with the JVC, like irregular tape speed etc. Also the sound was not as good as I was used to from the JVC.

So I did my usual fixup things, like cleaning everything, oiling etc. No good. I quickly found out that the voltage over the motor was dropping several volts at times. I suspected the power circuit board. So i tested the diodes, they were ok. I tested the caps and replaced them all nevertheless, although they were not really out of spec. Unfortunately, that did not help much. New belt. There was some improvement, yes. But still the voltage drop at times, from 12-13V all the way down to 6-7V. The motor would almost stop turning then. And it would squeak a lot.

motor fix

The solution would be to open up the motor and fix it there. That is always a bit tricky but I did it before and I therefore have some experience with the procedure. It went surprisingly well. There was some dust (powder) from the magnets and from carbon brushes. I also scraped clear the spaces between the 3 parts of the rotor (I think it’s called) so there would not be any more shortage. I reassembled a clean motor and lubricated it. When I tested it it it ran very smooth and silent. Cool! The tape speed is also a lot more constant than before. Also the sound seems to have some more punch to it. Maybe it has to do with improved tape-head contact, or with a more stable power supply to the audio board due to the changed caps.

audio fix

But I also have the capacitors ready for a complete overhaul of the audio prints. So somewhere in the next few days I hope I will find time to replace them and see if that will fix the muffled sound. I don’t expect a lot from that action, but hey, that’s what this hobby is all about.

[Update:]

Yesterday I did the recapping of one of the 2 audioprints, i.e. the print for the front channels. This is the result:

When I tested the audio after the process, I found that there was very little, if any at all, change in sound quality. I had made a ‘before’ recording so I could compare the sound.

So I am a little disappointed about that, but I guess the 8-track format was never intended for good audio quality, At least I didn’t break it. 🙂

So while I have all the caps here to replace the rear print also, I will not do that; too much trouble for little or no result…..

Anyway the unit is reassembled now and it playing happily.

My new addition to the collection is already a few months old, but here is the blogpost anyway.

It is an AKAI 1730D-SS Quadraphonic tape deck that I received from the first owner.

[picture shamelessly stolen from the internet]

When picking it up I tested the deck and only 2 of the 4 channels worked. Only the REAR. Strange. And one of those 2 channels failed intermittently.  When I got home I opened up the deck and had a look at it. I put on one of the many quadraphonic tapes that came with the deck. Quickly I found out that cleaning and fixing the 2ch-4ch switch solved that problem. That was easy.

But the FRONT channels still did not work. At all. No sound, no noise, no click when the deck was powered up, no nothing. I sure hope the playback amp hasn’t died. It appeared there are 4 audioprints in the machine, see picture. At the left of the picture you see the 2 playback prints, at the right the record prints. Each print is stereo. FRONT at the top, REAR at the bottom.

[picture showing the 2 right audio prints removed from their slots]

By turning the pot on the prints I found out wich print was unresponsive (I am going to recalibrate it anyway, so that did not matter). I took it out of its slot for further inspection.

Unfortunately I could not find anything wrong with the print or the components. No burned components, fused caps, burn marks, loose contacts, nothing. I was beginning to feel that I was reaching the end of my knowledge because I have not got expert knowledge of electronics.

When I was going to put the print back into its slot, I noticed something odd about the slot. The slot is a kind of very crude ISA-style slot type, like in the first IBM PC. I saw that the plastic of the slot was broken! That caused the print to not make good contact with the pins in the slot. See the pictures.

When I carefully with my hand pressed the slot so that the print made contact, everything started working! Eureka! ‘There, I found it.’ 

Now how to fix it. Glueing was no option. I soon thought of a tight tie-wrap, that might do the trick. I pulled the tie-wrap as tight as I could. See the pictures.



Then came the next issue. The deck did not want to record at all. I soon found out that the other slots were damaged too (duh). So another set of tie-wraps to the rescue. I put tie-wraps around everything and reconnected it all.

It worked ok, but not reliable. Even when just looking at the recorderprints weird effects on the signal were noticable. First I doubted my tie-wraps, but that solution DID work reliably at the playback prints. Just to be sure I sanded the contacts on the prints and voilá: everything worked flawlessly! So I put the print in and secured them thoroughly. ‘There, I fixed it again’

This is a machine from the early seventies, that has been idle for who knows how long, and I’m surprised at the audio quality.

Now I need to demag it, and calibrate it. Then it will probably sound even better!

[edit]
Although it sounded good at first hearing, further test revealed there was noise in the left front channel ,even when it was not playing. Same on the right rear.

So I replaced the 2sc458 transistors on all the audio prints. After that, I eagerly turned on the machine.

No signal at all!

Remember that I am only doing this as a hobby, I am not a professional guy and I know very little about electronics.

Searching and searching and searching again I found out that the new transistors I had ordered, had a different pin-out than the ones that came of the print. I had put the new ones in with the same orientation as the old ones, that seemed logical but that was incorrect.  They simply needed to be turned around, so that was relatively simple. I did not need to cross their legs.

After that it worked again, fortunately! Apparently these guys can withstand some rough handling haha. And the best part is, that the deck is silent again now, the noise is gone. I recalibrated it and it sound great!

Recently I obtained, for a fair price, a Teac X-2000R. It is a stereo reverse deck, with 6 heads, which means it will record also in reverse. It has dbx built-in, and it can use (chromium) EE tape. A digital counter in hours, minutes and seconds and bias fine tuning on the front panel is also provided. It has 9,5 and 19 cm/s speeds.

Dual capstan

Another prominent feature that is has, however proved to be a very problematic one. The deck is equipped with 2 capstans. This feature was introduced into the later tape deck models, almost towoards the end of the tapedeck-era, to further improve tape-head contact and wow&flutter. These assumptions are correct, and they work well when the deck is in new condition and everything is well calibrated and up to specifications.

On this deck however, things were not new and not up to specs. The dual capstan design is a challenge in itself, but things are further complicated by the fact that it has to function in reverse as well. On this unit that is accomplished by a belt that ‘travels’ across different parts of the flywheel that varies in diameter.

Problems

After the initial cleaning, optical and technical/mechanical, it soon became apparent that the tape handling was not up to par. Sometimes the tape would ‘run away’ from the heads a bit, resulting in loss of audio or worse: tape jam. Things were even worse when playing in reverse. I soon found out (through the service manual) that there were adjustments to be made to the tape tension.

Tape tension

But the increased tape tension was not the solution. When it was ok in forward play, it was bad in reverse. Or vice versa. Or it differed when loading large reels (26 cm) compared to 18 cm reels. Or it was different with different brands of tape. And that wasn’t even reproducible across sessions. And the next day it would be different again.

Solution

Of course the first thing I did was to change the belt. I have a blog of that action, but it is in dutch. So here it is, sorry only in dutch:

====== BEGIN OF DUTCH TEXT ======

Nou, de siem-snaar was snel binnen, en vanochtend was het toch regenachtig, dus aan de slag gegaan met het vervangen van de Teac X-2000R snaar.

Ik heb de uitbouw gedaan volgens de foto’s in deze thread, daar heb ik heel veel aan gehad:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59729

Daar wordt behandeld een X-1000R, en die blijkt toch niet helemaal hetzelfde van binnen. Ik kwam meteen al een grote print tegen die in de weg zat, deze is er niet in een X-1000.
Hierdoor kon ik niet bij de bovenste schroeven komen van de plaat waar de capstanmotor op vast zit. De print moest dus los en daarna omhoog gelift worden, er zitten helaas te veel kabels aan vast om hem compleet uit de weg te krijgen.







Na wat kabelbomen losgeknipt te hebben, kon ik de print opbeuren en omhooghouden met een plakbandrol.





Hierna kon ik er wel goed bij.





Nog even de plaat losknippen van de motor zelf:



Er zitten alsnog wat kabels in de weg, maar die zitten gelukkig vast met connectoren. Loshalen die hap dus.





Eindelijk uitgebouwd. De 2 vliegwielen in de achtergrond:



De 2 vliegwielen verwijderen. Goed links en rechts uit elkaar houden.



Overigens viel me meteen op het grote verschil tussen de snaren: de oude is een stuk langer dan de nieuwe. Dus of de oude was wat uitgerekt, ondanks dat het rubber nog vers aanvoelde, of de nieuwe is ietsje te krap. Of allebei.

Toen heb ik alles losgehaald en schoongemaakt en opnieuw gesmeerd: de vliegwielen, de aandrukrollen en het aandruk mechanisme. Oud vet verwijderd, nieuw vet er op. 

Alles zeer grondig schoongemaakt. Vliegwielen er weer op, meteen de washers aan de voorkant weer over de capstans gedaan. Nieuwe snaar er op:



En toen alles in omgekeerde volgorde weer vast. Het was een beetje pielen om de snaar weer over de motor te krijgen, maar het ging uiteindelijk wel. Als laatste de print weer laten zakken en vastgezet.

====== END OF DUTCH TEXT ======

Unfortunately this was not the solution that fixed it completely, although the situation improved a bit. Even increasing the tape tension to incredible heights (or incredible lows) did not fix it. So I went online to find a solution.

Several fora messages suggested that everything in the tape path was relevant to my problem. From tape guides, to the rubber idle rollers, to lubrication of the tension rollers, to the state of the rubber of the pinch rollers. From the tape tension to the smoothness of the tape in question. It seems that everything was related to weather the dual capstan principle would function correctly.
So I soaked the pinch rollers in detergent for one night. The rubber was much softer and grippier after that treatment. Again, a little improvement, but no permanent fix.
I switched the pinch rollers from left to right, to see if that would improve the situation. No way.
I lubricated all the moving parts, I installed the little O-rings that were required for the rollers to function correctly (expensive little buggers!). Still there was no definitive solution that worked all the time.

Meeting

In April I went to a meeting of fellow tape deck enthusiasts where there was an opportunity to work on decks. I tagged the deck along, and fortunately there was an expert who was willing to take a look at the Teac. Immediately he found one problem: I had put the tape tension way too high. We measured more than 100 gr. when 50 was required. He used a Tentelometer, a very rare instrument which he posesses. It looks like this:

After we adjusted the tension to 50 grams, the tape handling was still not good. In fact, it was worse. Then, the guy helping me thought the problem might be in the capstan motor, of which the carbon brushes would have degraded over the years resulting in less powerful drive. So, on the fly he opened the capstan motor, removed the old brushes and (he had them available) installed new ones. After this, still no good. But I had new carbon brushes! Jeey!

At the meeting we came to the conclusion that maybe the new belt I had put in was not an original Teac spare part but a fake. So I went to an official Teac repair center and got myself an original Teac approved belt. After I installed that belt, still not any better. Grrrr.

The solution!

Eventually, as a sort of last resort, I took the Service Manual and went through all the mechanical adjustments mentioned there. Some I could do, some I couldn’t. For instance, I haven’t got a spring scale necessary to measure torque. And then, finally, after I adjusted the pinch roller pressure to a much lower value, it suddenly all seemed to come together.
When I adjusted for a very, very low pressure of the pinch rollers on the capstans, even to the extend that I could very easily stop the tape when playing, the tape would indeed run fine along the heads and reverse play was no problem. So I adjusted for a little more pressure but anyway now it works great and I haven’t got any more tape issues.

Great sound

After that, I planned to calibrate the deck. This also proved to be not as easy as I thought. The service manual mentions a lot of steps and I think I did them all 4 or 5 times. The problem was that the record calibration required EE or Chrome tape, which I did not have. Fortunately I could borrow a Maxell XLII tape from a friend.
Bu after I calibrated the deck using the EE tape, it did not sound good. The level was way too low. And when I recorded at a higher level, the amount of distortion was unbearable. Something was not right here. After advice given to me on my favorite forum, I used normal tape to do the calibration. It still wasn’t to my expectation. I’m not sure what fixed it, but I repeated the calibration procedure several times, and after that I found the recording to be very good!

EE (chrome) tape

So the deck was performing as it should, reversing as it should, handling tape as it should and now I was to test it with EE tape and with the dbx noise reduction and dynamic expander on.
The result was, well, as close tot the original sound as you can hope for. The high tones were beautiful, and the sound was quiet as a CD. Out of nowhere the music starts. This is tape technology at it’s finest. I am very happy with my new tape deck.