My friend borrowed the above reel to reel machine to play some old Memorex tapes that she found in storage. However, we have found that there is a multitude of options to play tracks and there it is confusing us. Sometime it plays backwards music, forwards on the same side. We hear echos. It is driving us crazy trying to understand how the tape physically works because we keep trying to locate one specific song of her fathers and now we cant find it and we have rewound, flipped reels , and everything else and it is maddening. Is there anyway you can explain to people that have no "reel to reel" experience how the tape works. On the box it says tape can both ways. Thank you.
Well, not being there to try some diagnostics, there can be a number of reason that the tape plays backwards at times. One reason is that the tapes are 4 channel discrete tape requiring a 4 track 4 channel deck- this would mean track 2,4 are recorded in the forward direction. A Stereo (2 channel 4 track deck) play tracks 2,4 in the opposite direction. That is why you turn the tape over on some decks. Other possibilities could be tape path skew, that reverse relay is NOT changing the head that "listens: to the tape and that is just the start of what it could be. When a new person starts to use a deck of such age- it can be correct to assume that the deck is not working in some respect. A Tape deck Technician such as myself would know how to determine if the deck was working correct or not and know and have parts to correct it. I worked in the Factory Service in Chicago for Teac and actually have one coming into my shop in the near future. After 40 years of working on these I am still at it. I am sorry there may not be an easy answer to this.
SOURCE: TEAC X1000R Stereo Tape Desk (reel to reel)
usually its a capstan drive belt. $10-18 for the belt & 30mins repair time - you'll be up &brunnin b4 you know it [email protected]
SOURCE: play back on Sanyo mr-929 reel-to-reel tape recorder is backwards
I also have an MR-929. The information that you need is in the 'Stereophonic 4 track stereo''. As stereo is only two tracks, there is another 2 tracks in addition to the one you are listening to. Wind the entire reel to the empty spool, and then play that. As you have to physically turn the reel over to do so, you should then hear the other tracks (or track, if recorded in mono).
I use my 929 to play my parents recording of my family from the late 60s, which were recorded on a valve (tube) Ferguson machine, which had a green "magic eye" level indicator, which as a child I found fascinating!
Howie
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