marf Posted January 28, 2018 Share Posted January 28, 2018 All electronics are broken. Just assume that. I get people haggling me on eBay about the price of something because the same thing sold for this or that. Condition and functionality never seems to cross their minds. All old electronics are broken and need to be fixed by a tech. Even if they are running now. They soon won't be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 28, 2018 Author Share Posted January 28, 2018 Yeah true! I suppose I was trying to avoid paying for repair and see if I can do a DIY job. To me it essentially seems as though the rubber wheels that end up turning the take up wheel aren't being transferred sufficient power to take up tape. I wonder how much repair would cost? It doesn't seem so fucked that it should cost the world. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 29, 2018 Share Posted January 29, 2018 The pinch roller is suposed to be turned by friction, it's the capstan (the metal rod that presses against the pinch roller) that actually has a motor driving it. Honestly, it might just be a matter of turning things by hand and getting them limbered up, and youalso might want to look in to setting the capstan pressure and making sure the pinch roller isn't bad (it should be about as soft as the rubber used in a car tire, if it's hard like plastic that's no good). The supply reel (on the left) probably has its own motor and some kin of tension sensor that mkes sure the tape is kept at the right tension (too much and it stretches and wears the heads faster, too little and it won't stay against the head right and might jam) so if it isn't spinning that doesn't necessarily mean that it's stuck or the motor is dead or anything, it could also be that there's something wrong with the tape tension. If the pinch roller can't grip the tape well that could be the problem - the capstan pressure might help, gently sanding the surface of the roller with good quality (you don't want any grit coming off!) wet/dry sandpaper might help (doesn't have to me much, maybe 300 or 400 grit, just enough to make it look matte if it was shiny). You probably already have this but manualslib has the service manual: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1005575/Sony-Tc-630.html As long as you don't need any unobtainable parts (unlikely) that should have everything you or a tech would need to figure out the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 29, 2018 Author Share Posted January 29, 2018 I've actually managed to get it going! It's all the grease inside basically dried up and turned to glue fixing some of the mechanisms into place. My issue was that the idler rubber wheel wasn't low enough to contact the capstan metal circle so wasn't actually turning that to in turn move tape through and turn the pinch roller. The pinch roller seems pretty stiff yeah but it's letting tape through quite nicely. I need to strip it back to parts and remove all the dried up grease crap with some strong alcohol and put it back together after that with fresh lube. I'm listening to old reels from the 60s right now and recording them in. The speed is all off as the tape speed mechanisms is clearly all gluey and I'm not always getting traction on the capstan either so it's kind of finding sweet spots to atleast hear audio off the reels at this stage. Depending on the quality of the tape I'm actually getting some pretty clear audio coming out. What I don't get is that as I change the 'mode'dial between stereo and left/right and in response to what I hear adjust the balance knob from l/centre/right, I'm isolating two separate audio streams which seem to be recorded onto the tape. Is that simply because whoever has recorded to the tape has recorded in single channel mono at one stage and recorded something different in the other channel? It's pretty crazy because I kind of blend the two audio steams to make some bizarre blends - sort of raindrops falling on my headed blended with home recordings with people recording their cats! Bizarre but a lot of fun. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 Thank you very much for help rsp. I didn't actually have the service manual, only the user manual. That's super helpful thank you. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 I've actually managed to get it going! It's all the grease inside basically dried up and turned to glue fixing some of the mechanisms into place. My issue was that the idler rubber wheel wasn't low enough to contact the capstan metal circle so wasn't actually turning that to in turn move tape through and turn the pinch roller. The pinch roller seems pretty stiff yeah but it's letting tape through quite nicely. I need to strip it back to parts and remove all the dried up grease crap with some strong alcohol and put it back together after that with fresh lube. I'm listening to old reels from the 60s right now and recording them in. The speed is all off as the tape speed mechanisms is clearly all gluey and I'm not always getting traction on the capstan either so it's kind of finding sweet spots to atleast hear audio off the reels at this stage. Depending on the quality of the tape I'm actually getting some pretty clear audio coming out. What I don't get is that as I change the 'mode'dial between stereo and left/right and in response to what I hear adjust the balance knob from l/centre/right, I'm isolating two separate audio streams which seem to be recorded onto the tape. Is that simply because whoever has recorded to the tape has recorded in single channel mono at one stage and recorded something different in the other channel? It's pretty crazy because I kind of blend the two audio steams to make some bizarre blends - sort of raindrops falling on my headed blended with home recordings with people recording their cats! Bizarre but a lot of fun. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Glad it's working! I've had to replace two pinch rollers so far, one in a reel to reel and one in a space echo. The reel to reel kept working but squeaked louder and louder the longer I used it. The space echo got kind of sticky on the surface and the tape would stick to it and jam. I guess it depends on the specific kind of rubber probably. It's possible that your play head is way out of alignment and that's why you're hearing two things at once. Is one of them backward? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 Occasionally one stream is totally reversed yes but this isn't always the case. I was putting it down to bleed through from the other side of the tape if that's possible or even simply dodgy overdubbing? Either way I'm going to start stripping it away now and cleaning it from the inside. I suspect this could take a few days! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 That sounds like head alignment to me It's off so much that you're getting both sides at the same time. That's how I got my space echo - the heads were so misligned that no echo came out at all, because it was recording on a completely different part of the tape than it played back from, so it went up for sale cheap. Been working great since I fixed it up around 2007. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 Ah ok. Thanks man! So I shouldn't give up if that's a messed up then!? Can I realign the heads myself and how?! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 Ah ok. Thanks man! So I shouldn't give up if that's a messed up then!? Can I realign the heads myself and how?! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Well, you can't get it really correctly realigned without a test tape and some meters, but since you aren't going to be using it to record tapes for archiving or playing back on other machines that's not actually a big issue for you. The main thing is make ABSOLUTELY SURE that none of the tools you use when working near the heads are magnetic at all, not even slightly. Here's a correct alignment/setup procedure: http://www.diamondcut.com/vforum/forum/general-discussion/general-audio/2419-reel-to-reel-maintenance-and-calibration-procedure For you, there is a sort of cheat that might work, though, and all you need is some tape (leader is OK too) that you don't mind ruining. I haven't done this but the chair of one of the departmentswhen I was in college used it for a long time when he ran a budget studio in the 70s and 80s, and I've heard it described in other places for as long as I've been interested in this stuff so I guess it's working for some people anyway. Basically, you want to take a grease pencil and mark the entire surface of the play head with it (dry erase marker would probably work too and be easier to clean off but I've always heard about it being done with grease pencil). Then you run some tape through the machine, a few feet should be enough, and look at the heads again. The tape wear pattern with the current head alignment will show up as a mark where the grease pencil was worn off by the tape (cut the bit of tape with grease pencil on it off of the reel and throw it away!). You want it to be a perfectly even rectangle, centered over the head gaps. If you look at the head wear patterns near the end of this article, you'll see some examples of what it might look like if the head is out of alignment - you don't want these (what you want is pretty much the shape of the mark in the "wrap error" picture (the one on the right), except centered on the gap instead of off center. You want to get that as accurate as possible by eye, and then you can align the record head to the playback head and the machine should work OK with tapes that were recorded on it, but it probably won't work that great with tapes recorded elsewhere and tapes recorded on it probably won't play well on other machines. To align the record head, I think what you'd be best off doing is sending a test tone from your DAW into both channels of the reel to reel, and then adjusting the record head while you're recording AND listening from the play head, until both L and R tones coming back off tape are as closely matched as possible (phase, amplitude, wave shape). You shoud be able to use an oscilloscope (Melda makes a free VST one) on each channel, or inverting one channel in the DAW and adjusting until they null as completely as you can manage. I don't remember exactly how you handle the erase head but I think if you recorded a test tone onto the tape for a few minutes and then rewound and recorded silence over the test tone while monitoring from the playback head, the correct alignment for the erase head would be when there is nothing left of the test tone - if the erase head isn't aligned to the record head I would imagine that whatever you're erasing would only get partially erased and you'd have some of the tone bleeding into the silence you recorded over it. That's just a guess though. Again, I've never tried this myself so the best advice I can give is go slow and don't touch the heads with metal tools or get magnets near them, and I HAVE NEVER TRIED ANY OF THIS so do it at your own risk, but in theory it should work OK as long as you never need to exchange tapes with any other machines. Also, I assume existing head wear will complicate it - if the heads are worn unevenly then it might be hard or impossible to align them correctly and have the tape actually sit on them the way it's supposed to, because the actual surfaces of worn heads aren't actually shaped correctly anymore. Excessive head wear basically means "sell it cheap to someone who is REALLY in to vintage reel to reels and has a lot of disposable income," because repairing or replacing heads is way more expense and hassle than it's worth for most people (but it's worth trying to get the machine to someone who can restore it,because they should be preserved) EDIT: I also think the alignment procedure in the Space Echo manuals is similar to this, since you can't use a test tape in a Space Echo and it just has to be aligned with itself, not to a standard. So you might want to find a Space Echo alignment guide and check that out, it could help. And finally, don't worry about it TOO much, as long as you can get it sounding good you're probably OK since you're using it as an effect. I've never aligned the heads on any tape machine I've ever owned (except the space echo) because of the cost of calibration tapes, and I've still gotten plenty of good use out of them because "good enough" is good enough for what I do with them. Just don't expect to send a tape you recorded on that thing out to a mastering house or something! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 Thank you very much for such a thorough and helpful message. Really appreciated! I've almost degunked the internal workings, just need to do a few more bits, relube and try and see if it works better. It was being a bit weird with not spinning the capstan sufficiently when changing the speed settings etc etc. I've got no idea how I'd tell if the heads were worn as you'd say, they look clean and ok to me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 It sounds like it still works, it's just in need of a lot of setup and maintenance. The thing about reel to reels is even the worst of them are generally really sturdy, they had to be to work right at all. I feel like as long as nothing is mechanically broken and the heads aren't completely worn out then it's repairable, it just becomes a matter of how expensive and difficult it will be. Yours doesn't sound that bad. I just want to reemphasize here, though, that all of those ideas I posted about doing a head alignment without a test tape are purely speculative and I haven't tried any of them (other than aligning the heads in the space echo by ear a couple times). Do them at your own risk! As long as you don'tmagnetize or damage a head with a screwdriver they shouldn't do any actual harm but they might well just end up making the alignment even worse than it already is. And you might not even need to do it once the transport is running smoothly and the tape tension is OK and everything - try recording and playing back some audio with the heads as-is once you get it running and if it sounds OK then that might be good enough for what you're doing. When I got the Otari running for the first time I had to spend 10 or 15 minutes just sliding the capstan back and forth from its stop position to its play position to loosen up all the gummy oil in it and get it working right, but it has been fine ever since. Oh, protip: you can buy like a pint of pure mineral oil (which is the same thing as sewing machine oil and a good lubricant for stuff like reel to reels) for a couple dollars at an drug store but it's hard to find because it's sold as a laxative. The stuff that they show you if yo ask for mineral oil is usually in cosmetics or baby supplies an has additives and scents and stuff, but if you go to the OTC medicines and dig around you'll find the good stuff eventually, over with all of the other stuff most people don't want to be seen buying like hemorrhoid cream and athlete's foot medication and louse shampoo. I got a bottle 5 years ago an use it for my reel to reel and tape echo (rare), my hair clippers, my DIY pickup winder, oiling my cutting boards, and few other things, but I've still only used maybe half an inch of it if that. One of those bottles is a lifetime supply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheatheman Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 I'm dumb but what do you gain from reel to reel over cassette for that "str8 2 tape" feel? Also, it's 4:36am but I'm about to go download air windows to tape. Looks amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheatheman Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 umm...this does NOT make my tracks sound lofi !!!! much happier with my custom ableton racks on master plus monotron filter ext fx insert!!! guess i should watch the video tfw you realize you're making $800 a month on patreon for a placebo dsp effect (sorry rsp. half joking) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chesney Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 Depends on the machine, R2R machines were trying to get as much fidelity as they could at the time so their function wasn't catering for our lofi needs in the future. Mixing on tape just gives a different sound to digital/in the box or whatever. If you want lofi, the shittier the gear the better i.e. consumer reels or cassette. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheatheman Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 sounds like my monotron filter on the master will service my needs then! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 31, 2018 Author Share Posted January 31, 2018 Thank you again Rsp for help and nice to see others chipping in too! This was an inherited gift and I want it mainly for use an an effect but it's been a nice project trying to do a diy repair job on it. I'm not going to rush to do the head realignment rsp don't worry. Considering the hours I've put into cleaning it all up (I'm yet to turn it back on again but the transport and mechanisms all seem a lot better now) I might just pay to get it aligned. I haven't actually tried to record in anything to tape yet and I'm very interested to hear what the sound on sound and onboard echo effect sounds like! I'll report back! Thanks again people. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 Thank you again Rsp for help and nice to see others chipping in too! This was an inherited gift and I want it mainly for use an an effect but it's been a nice project trying to do a diy repair job on it. I'm not going to rush to do the head realignment rsp don't worry. Considering the hours I've put into cleaning it all up (I'm yet to turn it back on again but the transport and mechanisms all seem a lot better now) I might just pay to get it aligned. I haven't actually tried to record in anything to tape yet and I'm very interested to hear what the sound on sound and onboard echo effect sounds like! I'll report back! Thanks again people. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I've thought about doing that too, I just don't know who Id trust to do it well locally and I don't want to ship it because of the cost and potential for damage. But having it professionally set up and then making a "house calibration" tape on it seems like the perfect plan for me, since I have no clue if my calibration tape (which was given to me free by a guy who had sold his reel to reel, and is from probably 1988) is even accurate any more, plus I don't really trust my magnetometer (I couldn't afford to get even the cheapest new one sensitive enough for this so I've got one from the 1960s that works fine but I have no clue how accurately calibrated it is, and the calibration tools for one of those things cost a fortune, too) so I don't want to put any money into a new tape that might be ruined the first time I use it if I haven't gotten the machine degaussed thoroughly (and I have no way to really tell since I can't know how accurate the magnetometer actually is - it's trustworthy enough to tell if I need to degauss but not enough to tell if I've done it well enough to risk a $150+ calibration tape in it), but getting it fully serviced by a pro and then making one or two house tapes immediately seems like it would be worth doing, I just haven't. umm...this does NOT make my tracks sound lofi !!!! much happier with my custom ableton racks on master plus monotron filter ext fx insert!!! guess i should watch the video tfw you realize you're making $800 a month on patreon for a placebo dsp effect (sorry rsp. half joking) It's not supposed to make your tracks sound lo-fi, it's supposed to make them sound like they were recorded to tape (which is not lo-fi at all once you're talking about higher end reel to reel machines) and it does an impressive job of that, to the point where I haven't actually used my reel to reel once since this was released. Unless the "not lo-fi" was also part of the joke, I'm assuming only the bit after the photo was a joke. I thought the same thing before I started using them, because frankly his Youtube demos don't usually do the plugins justice. Anyhow, no worries either way, I've had really good experiences with his stuff over the past year ad at this point it has replaced almost all of my commercial plugins because this stuff just sounds better than most of them to my ear, and gives a finer level of control (because you're mixing and matching a lot of single-purpose plugins in different combinations rather than having a single monolithic plugin that tries to do everything) and they're free now. If they were hard to hear I'd be skeptical but they aren't in my experience - the changes are sometimes subtle but always obvious if that makes sense - they don't tend to make things sound heavily processed but the actual effect they have on the sound is usually quite obvious - it just doesn't sound like it was done with a plugin usually, it sounds more like it's affecting the sound at the source. I couldn't be happier with the Airwindows stuff, myself, but it's definitely not stuff for broad-stroke sound design work (with a few exceptions), it's more for traditional mixing. For me it's almost all I need because I try to do the more sculptural work at the source, through programming or mic placement or hardware processors or whatever, and the ITB stuff I do is usually on the subtle side to begin with. If you're doing stuff entirely ITB then the Airwindows plugins definitely aren't going to cover all your needs. For me, I could cover all my mixing needs with TDR Nova, any one Valhalla reverb, and the Airwindows plugins if I had to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 31, 2018 Author Share Posted January 31, 2018 Yeah I plan to get some of them too so thanks for the tip off! It seems amazing that he's offering them for free considering the effort gone in. Very pleased to say that when plugged in all the mechanisms now run great at all the different speed settings. The fast forward function seems a little dodgy as you have to kind of apply a certain degree of force to lift one of the fly wheels out of the way before enganging fast forward via a button, it's a weird sort of lever. But as long as I can play/record/rewind, I suppose I might be ok? Haha Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted January 31, 2018 Author Share Posted January 31, 2018 Sorry to double post, another question: where can I get new hq tape from... well good enough standard for my purposes I.e. As an effect/as sending digital audio from daw to tape to saturate slightly??? Are there certain brands I should go for/avoid and how much should I expect to pay? I only need one reel I think perhaps two to be safe. Ebay? This device plays back at 19cm (7 1/2) 9.5cm (3 3/4) and (4.8cm 1 7/8) if that helps I'm probably being too eager, I haven't recorded anything to the existing tapes I've got from the 70s here. I'm sure I've got a lot of weird stuff to find yet! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 RMGI is, as far as I know, the only company making reel to reel tape right now. IIRC they bought out Quantegy, who had previously bought out Ampex, but I could be wrong. Since I'm using it as an effect I can reuse the same tape a lot, so the half dozen 7" reels of Quantegy tape I bought about 12 years ago is still more than enough, I've only opened two of them. http://rmgi.eu/ http://www.rmgi-usa.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 Sounds like everything is working, must have just been old grease that needed to loosen up. I bet that lever you need to lift manually will do the same eventually. sounds like my monotron filter on the master will service my needs then! If you want really obvious, lo-fi tape sound, try to find a microcassette recorder with line in and out. They sound amazing for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted February 1, 2018 Author Share Posted February 1, 2018 Thanks man. Yeah so I've put it all back together and all transport functions are working and all tape speed are now selectable! When set on stereo and centred balance I'm seeing less regular movement on the left channel than the right on The Doors La woman...but a good note is that I'm not getting two audio streams this time which makes more sense! Am I right in thinking that over time the left channel gain sensitivity/threshold (not sure what you'd call it) in the electronics has lost balance with the right channel? Either way it's sounding great otherwise, the noise suppressor seems quite a drastic cut to the high end so I think I'll tend to leave that off entirely and just live with the hiss which of course I like anyway. I think I can get some tape off Thomann website: £20 ish Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted February 1, 2018 Share Posted February 1, 2018 Nose reduction also pretty much eliminates the ability to drive the tape itself hard, too, because the hotter the signal the more the noise reduction compresses. For this kind of stuff you're better leaving it off. Re: imbalance of channels, this is something I wasn't aware of but: Low frequency adjustment cannot be accurately accomplished off a test tape due to fringing unless the test tape and the play head track width is matched. However, one can often get close a test tape, but don’t necessarily tune for flat. It’s best to leave this alone if you can. The right channel of quarter-track machines will show more bass than the left as the fringing effect is coming in from both sides. Read the material on the MRL website. Source: http://richardhess.com/notes/2008/02/02/aligning-a-tape-recorder/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polytrix Posted February 1, 2018 Author Share Posted February 1, 2018 Hmmm fair enough maybe the discrepancy is to be exoected then. Was just getting a noticeable difference like 4db maybe less on the other channel. I'll keep playing today and see but I think you can change the gain levels internally. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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