[philicorda[_6_]]

I'm restoring an old four track cassette Teac 144 at the moment.
The pinch roller, idlers etc have certainly seen better days. They are
not melted or falling apart.
I've seen this 'Rubber Renue' product recommended, but it seems to only
be sold in the US, and nowhere I can find will ship internationally.
(Mouser, MG Chemicals will not. RS and Maplin don't stock it.)

Does anyone know if there somewhere that sells it over here, or an
equivalent?

[Scott Dorsey]

philicorda wrote:
I'm restoring an old four track cassette Teac 144 at the moment.
The pinch roller, idlers etc have certainly seen better days. They are
not melted or falling apart.

Replace them all.

I've seen this 'Rubber Renue' product recommended, but it seems to only
be sold in the US, and nowhere I can find will ship internationally.
(Mouser, MG Chemicals will not. RS and Maplin don't stock it.)

Does anyone know if there somewhere that sells it over here, or an
equivalent?

If it's what I think it is, it's methyl acetate, and it works well on
some kinds of rubber to soften them. There is another popular product
called "Fedron" which was a chlorinated hydrocarbon, which worked well
on neoprenes and natural rubber.

The problem is that there are hundreds of things called "rubber" which
are all chemically different.

Replace the pinch roller and idlers, and expect to replace them again
in another five years. None of the rubber softening agents will really
do what you want. The parts should not be expensive. Russell Industries
in the US should stock them if you don't want to buy from Tascam.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:16:49 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

snip
Replace the pinch roller and idlers, and expect to replace them again in
another five years. None of the rubber softening agents will really do
what you want. The parts should not be expensive. Russell Industries
in the US should stock them if you don't want to buy from Tascam.

I have not held much hope of getting replacement parts, so have not yet
called Tascam. It's worth a try. Those generic replacements from Russell
Industries should be fine though.

The pinch roller might be a bit more tricky. I found a place (http://
www.terrysrubberrollers.com/) that rebuilds them. A little excessive for
a four track cassette perhaps. He says he finds soap and water to be
roughly as good as rubber restorer in the long term.

--scott

[Scott Dorsey]

philicorda wrote:
On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:16:49 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Replace the pinch roller and idlers, and expect to replace them again in
another five years. None of the rubber softening agents will really do
what you want. The parts should not be expensive. Russell Industries
in the US should stock them if you don't want to buy from Tascam.

I have not held much hope of getting replacement parts, so have not yet
called Tascam. It's worth a try. Those generic replacements from Russell
Industries should be fine though.

Tascam is actually very good about parts for older equipment. They still
are making new pinch rollers for the Model 38.

The pinch roller might be a bit more tricky. I found a place (http://
www.terrysrubberrollers.com/) that rebuilds them. A little excessive for
a four track cassette perhaps. He says he finds soap and water to be
roughly as good as rubber restorer in the long term.

There are a lot of places that do rebuilds, but it's not worth it for
something like this because if Tascam doesn't have a replacement, Russell
will. Russell has several pages of different pinch wheels for cassette
decks in production.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:37:42 -0500, Scott Dorsey wrote:

snip
There are a lot of places that do rebuilds, but it's not worth it for
something like this because if Tascam doesn't have a replacement,
Russell will. Russell has several pages of different pinch wheels for
cassette decks in production.

Thanks again. I'll get in touch with Tascam and examine that site more
closely.

[Mike Rivers]

philicorda wrote:

Thanks again. I'll get in touch with Tascam and examine that site more

If by "that site" you mean the TASCAM web site, you won't find much
encouragement about parts. Send them e-mail, or better yet, spring for a
phone call. TASCAM isn't as independent as it used to be and basically
all their parts support comes from TEAC. If TEAC has a service facility
closer to where you are than California, try that first. Even though
TEAC didn't put their brand name on your deck, they built it, probably
from parts that are used in several other transports. They almost
certainly have a "common parts" list and can sell you a new pinch roller.

--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:59:51 +0000, Mike Rivers wrote:

philicorda wrote:

Thanks again. I'll get in touch with Tascam and examine that site more

If by "that site" you mean the TASCAM web site, you won't find much
encouragement about parts.

I was thinking of the Russell Industries site. There is a lot of parts on
there!

Send them e-mail, or better yet, spring for a
phone call. TASCAM isn't as independent as it used to be and basically
all their parts support comes from TEAC. If TEAC has a service facility
closer to where you are than California, try that first. Even though
TEAC didn't put their brand name on your deck, they built it, probably
from parts that are used in several other transports. They almost
certainly have a "common parts" list and can sell you a new pinch
roller.

I emailed TASCAM and they got back to me right away.
They still have the pinch roller for $8.10, and some of the belts
(counter belt A, and capstan belt). Not the idler tires though.

That's not a problem as Russell have the idlers, and "Vintage
Electronics" do a complete belt kit for $10.

The transport is certainly from some other TEAC decks. The construction
inside the 144 is quite amusing, with odd shaped bits of metal screwed
together all over the place. It somehow doesn't look like it was made for
mass production. It is at least possible to separate it into it's main
components though, compared to a densely packed modern 4-track.

Another odd thing is that there is almost the complete circuitry for four
track simultaneous recording, with four record amps and bias traps.
However, you can only record two tracks at once, and there are only two
channels of dolby encoding available. It's as if it was going to be four
channel record, but they changed their minds at the last minute.

[Scott Dorsey]

philicorda wrote:
The transport is certainly from some other TEAC decks. The construction
inside the 144 is quite amusing, with odd shaped bits of metal screwed
together all over the place. It somehow doesn't look like it was made for
mass production. It is at least possible to separate it into it's main
components though, compared to a densely packed modern 4-track.

Odds are they use the same transport mechanism in a dozen different
machines. That's how they keep the costs down.

Another odd thing is that there is almost the complete circuitry for four
track simultaneous recording, with four record amps and bias traps.
However, you can only record two tracks at once, and there are only two
channels of dolby encoding available. It's as if it was going to be four
channel record, but they changed their minds at the last minute.

Probably they made a version with the same PC board stuffed a little bit
differently, as a full four-track machine. For one thing, doing this
halves the cost of Dolby licensing.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers]

On Nov 3, 6:28 pm, philicorda
wrote:

Another odd thing is that there is almost the complete circuitry for four
track simultaneous recording, with four record amps and bias traps.
However, you can only record two tracks at once, and there are only two
channels of dolby encoding available. It's as if it was going to be four
channel record, but they changed their minds at the last minute.

It seems to me that this has something to do with licensing. Since the
compact cassette is under license from Philips, they had to grant an
exception to allow TASCAM (and others) to run all four tracks in the
same direction, and also to change the speed to 3-3/4 IPS. It could be
that they saved some money on license fees by recording only two
channels at a time. Or maybe they saved money on the power supply by
not having to provide erase current on all four head windings at once.