TVB
400 Club - QQ All-Star
As a confessed quadraholic, I've been watching a couple of teac quad reel decks in a pawn shop for about a year but they wanted too much money for either of them, so I passed. One of them was a 7 1/2 inch machine and the other was a behemoth 10 1/2 inch machine. Just the other day I went into the pawn shop because everything was half price (going out of business). They only had the behemoth machine left. I had wanted the smaller unit but since my 4 akai quad reel decks had all quit working, I went ahead and looked at the heads on the big machine. They looked clean and shiny and so did the entire tape path. All of the transport controls worked and there was movement in all 4 meters when I played a tape so I offered a low ball figure and the owner accepted. I got it home and hooked it up and it not only sounded great in all 4 channels, it was the most beautiful machine I've ever seen. The front of the unit is amazing with it's simplicity. I want a simple deck because the more you get on these things the more there is to go wrong. Don't want no dual capstain, output level controls, 3/34 speed, bi directional play yadda yadda yadda on a quad deck. But I might make use of the 15 1/2 ips speed for those $300 prerecorded tapes being made! This deck has the minimum of controls needed to do what I want it to do, which is rewind my play back my 100 plus quad reel tapes of recordings lovingly transferred from Q'8's and CD-4's. I also have a nice collection of original pre- recorded Q'4's. Only 4 record pots to clean and a huge capstain coupled with fast rewind. And the motors and power transformer are HUGE!. If you haven't guessed, its a Teac 40-4. I immediately pulled the dbx module off from under the unit because Il'l never use it and the deck looks great without it it inmo. With my 10 1/2 black teac original take up reel set against the chrome front of the deck, the look is amazing. I just ordered some deoxit because even though the record light comes on the unit doesn't erase or record. I suspect it needs cleaning as there was a similar post in regards to a 40-4 with the same issue. I really don't care that much if I cant get it to record because I already have most everything I want on tape. I am concerned about lubrication of the motors and can find no oiling tubes anywhere on the machine. There is also a slight squeak coming from somewhere which I haven't nailed down (only in playback). Without a tape playing, all functions are quiet and fast with no noise. My question is regarding the record function. Are there recording contacts somewhere that need to be cleaned or will cleaning the record button contacts possibly do the job. Any ideas about finding the slight squeak? The only person I would trust with working on this deck is skywave, but Chicago is just too far away. I tried to attach photo but could not get it to work.
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