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False Start on My Maiden Voyage into RTR.. (long, sorry).

Posted by marc-homeslice (A) on February 5, 2007 at 14:36:59

Well, after taking stock of all the great advice i had gotten here.. having gotten a nice deal on a Revox A77 mk IV from a local Craig Lister (pretty good cosmetics, bonus of very nice silver Revox NAB adapters) and compiling my "starter's kit", if you will -- copious thanks to inmate X2000R, btw, who has been extremely helpful and grabbed some great Quantegy stuff for me upon his recent visit (including tape at factory cost, a bunch or metal reels in great shape, a cool little splicing tool and 2 NOS metal reeled Max. XLI from his private stash).. i was all set to play this past weekend.

Well.. i had bad news, than good news and ultimately bad news again.

A little intro., my deck was sent to a restorer who shall remain blameless at this juncture.. just so you all know that the deck was gone over entirely and apparently c leaned, refirbed and run in to factory specs in all areas. Thing is, i couldn't find the time to touch it for several months. It sat in my chilly attic for awhile.. in the downtime, i did get the cables, Revox manual (off of eBay) tape and other supplies i would need to give it an initial go.

I cued a reel of old tape just to get a feel for tape itself.. i also carefully spliced on some leader, just for practice. Long story short.. the capstan wouldn't turn.. FF & Rew. motors were fine.. so that was a major bummer. Just when all hope was lost and i knew boxing back up to a now "dubious" refirber.. i go to the deck again and hear a faint motr noise coming from it.. Low-and-behold, the capstan motor had warmed up and was now good-to-go.

I then was able to play a crappy recording through my system off of the old tape (which promptly broke during its play).. i was a bit suprised that no sensor activity sensed this and shut down the deck.. i was upstairs and the wfe shouted, "your RTR deck has a problem and is going crazy!".. i imagined a spaghetti factory.. but it was mainly just the take up motor spinning kinda madly with the no tape tension.
I was still pretty stoked at this point.

First i cued up some old tape that came on a Revox reel that i just got from the UK. Another little leader splice later and i was off to fart around with both my preamp (vintage fisher 400 cx2) and the deck's interface. Well, first i played it and there was nothing on the tape. Then i deceded to try an record something on it -- so i cued up a recently cleaned LP (NY - American Stars & Bars i believe)..

Good news: Am now prety much aware of my cable routings and both preamp settings for making recordings & playback. Also, heard my decks preamp clarity through my system while montoring and trying to get a decent recording.

Bad news: I knew something was up when i had zero, VU meter activity.. no matter what was tried.. they were dead. I figured, screw it, i'll just set my levels at 7 and see if i can get something decent at 7.5 ips.

Well, what i got was muddy, mega-dropout filled playback.. in fact after i tried on the older tape, I then cleaned my heads with some everclear, waited a few minutes and then gave it a crack with some fresh 407. Same exact result.. maybe a tiny bit better, but still something really amiss.

So now i need to send back to the refirber.. he's been very helpful and nice about it all and will send a Fed Ex call tag when i have the unit boxed properly -- still a major bummer nontheless.

After all, i am still feeling pretty good about handling tape for the first time. I feel good about the future of this new aspect of my audio hobby.. just can't wait to get a healthy deck to play with.

I can see why you guys dig it so much -- also how things can drive you bananas. With my chin up, i'll post back about what is ailing my deck and the continuation of my fledging RTR operations.

Thanks for listening guys & girls.. and big props again to X2000R for answering so many of my ???s and hooking my up with a great deal on quality supplies..

cheers, marc

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