Xdevo1973
Active Member
Well this has been an odyssey. I've owned this 8 track player for a number of years and it never worked right: channels going in and out, poor speed control, slipping belts, channels hissing, you name it. Well, I finally dug into it and replaced all of the caps-that improved things dramatically but I still had a problem with a channel going in and out. It turned out to be a flaky opamp IC that I was able to order new on Ebay believe it or not. No matter what I did, I couldn't overcome wow and flutter, especially with quad 8 tracks which are obviously longer in length. New belts didn't help, neither did cleaning the capstan or roughing it up, etc. It turns out that Lafayette used 3 different motors in this unit until they finally got it right. I just scored a parts unit and swapped out the motor for the third time. Now it sounds great! It is interesting to note that this unit was most likely built during a very narrow window of time-most likely from 1972 to 73. It is interesting that there were three different motors used. Apparently the third one is a charm. I understand that there's the wow and flutter problem with 8 track tapes in general, but they played without a problem in my 2 channel 8 track players, so I knew the problem wasn't with the actual tapes. The only reason I stuck with this unit is that I like the actual look of it-that Lafayette aluminum/black combination with the metal wood grain case. It's all metal and doesn't look cheesy like many of the quad 8 track decks. I'm glad I can finally enjoy it.