I have Akai gx 230. Its doinf Rew and FF but Play not working, though engages. Tape does not move. Can it be tape threading problem?

Take out the tape and press play, do the wheels move? if not the motor has burnt out, the tapes may have been sticky. Hold a tape and wind the wheels with your finger, are they difficult to move?

Nothing like going back in time. Think what you have here is a belt issue. As in the belt has stretched over time and is no longer tight enough to hold when you engage the motor on ff or rew. Repair shop might be able to help or else you might want to consider a new machine which is all digital recording. ie no moving parts inside.

l would have a look inside to see if when a tape is inserted it loads and will ff and rew, if the transport that moves the tape has failed it will account for what is happening.

clean the heads. your betamax is eating your tape.

it never eate tape in ff or rew mode . look for back tenssion

If you press Play, Rew or FF and can hear something in the machine (even though the tape doesn't turn), then it's more than likely a broken capstan belt.

Have you checked to see if there is a set screw in the handle which tightens onto the shaft? That's how most are secured. Look for a hole in the handle -- there should be a slotted screw which can be loosened with a very small scresdriver.

My name is Ed, I have the Akai GX-747 Reel to Reel, my problem is when press the play button it engages but the capstan does not spin up to the pinch roller. The reels do not turn.
My e-mail - [email protected]

Sometimes this is due to the tape not being pinched between the capstan and the rubber roller.

Make sure there is no slack in the tape when you put it in the deck. See if you can observe the tape going down over the capstan on the correct side.

If this isn't the problem, then the mechanism that engages the capstan roller may not to be working. In most cases, the rubber roller is mounted on the same mechanism that moves the record-play head against the tape. If this mechanism isn't moving, that would cause the problems you describe.

Though not familiar with this model, VCRs of all sorts have an idler mechanism which drives the supply and takeup spindles. Either the idler is somehow defective and slipping, and, assuming this idler is belt driven, the belt may be slipping just enough to cause a no Rew/FFW condition. If you had access to a test tape jig (a clear dummy tape, which allows a tech to view what is happening in the area normally obscured by the loaded tape), this might give a clue as to what is happening. On alot of machines, a problem with Rew/FFW would also mean a tape takeup problem in standard play, result in tape spilling out inside the machine. Sensors would catch this condition and go into a error mode, as yours is doing. One other thing which might be happening here, is the pinch roller not being disengaged from the capstan in the Rew/FFW modes. I think this is where I'd look first, and you can probably see if such is happening just by pulling the cover off the VCR. The pinch roller is just to the right of the rotating video head. In the play and forward/rev search modes it will press the tape up against the capstan (a rotating shaft). When in Rew/FFW, the pinch roller should be pulled back from the capstan, maybe 1/4 inch or so. Whatever the case, repair will likely take someone tech savvy. Costs might not be economically justified, with the low-cost, disposable rigs sold in the last 10+ years.