Never do this.

[Tapewolf]

Never, ever, leave a drive roller that you suspect of neoprene rot on the window ledge overnight.



http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/tape/PinchRollerSoup.jpg

[Turnsky]

... the heck?

[rabid_fox]

Explain this to the Slow of Thinking, please.

[Tapewolf]

Explain this to the Slow of Thinking, please.

When neoprene and rubber rollers start to go bad, they become tacky.  You can get them rebuilt, and there's a place in town where I'm going to make enquiries.
If you take them into the bathroom in the evening, clean them and then leave them on the window ledge in mid-summer, well, it magically turns into a puddle of Fairy Liquid by morning.

Fortunately I've already ordered a replacement.  But getting it rebuilt just got that much harder 

See also:
http://terrysrubberrollers.com/T.html  ...for some before and after pictures.

**EDIT**

This happened to someone else too:
http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?p=2177395#post2177395

Pictures are here, but I can't remember if you can see them without being logged in:
http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?p=2219286#post2219286

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

No can see. Aww.

[Tapewolf]

No can see. Aww.

Try this:

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/tape/ag440-1.jpg


http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/tape/ag440-2.jpg

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

That's some pretty horrendous meltage, there.

[shadowterm]

okay, and this is really lack of subject knowledge on my part, but what kind of drive is the roller for?

[Tapewolf]

okay, and this is really lack of subject knowledge on my part, but what kind of drive is the roller for?

It came out of this:
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/tape/a807.png

...the shiny round metal lump about 2/3 of the way across the machine is the metal housing, and inside it is the pinch roller.  When you hit 'play', a solenoid will shove the roller tightly up against the actual drive roller, which is a metal shaft (and can't be seen in this photo).

This is a more illustrative photo:
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/tape/tsr8_naked.png
...the drive shaft and pinch roller can be clearly seen on the right-hand side of the transport.

[shadowterm]

ah, okay. I thought it was a tape drive, but I wasn't sure. I get the concept of it's function now, too, it basically is what makes the tape reel turn right?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

It keeps the tape correctly tensioned across the read/write heads.

[shadowterm]

oh.

[Tapewolf]

In a reel-to-reel, or cassette deck (and also VHS, DAT, LTO drives as well), you have two spooling motors (one for each reel), a capstan motor and the recording heads.   When I first started to do reel-to-reel stuff, I was under the impression that the spooling motors pulled the tape across the machine while it was recording or playing.  This is actually wrong.

The spooling motors do two things - winding, and backtension.  Winding is easy - basically you switch the left one on and the tape winds backwards very quickly.  You turn the right one on, and the tape winds forwards, very quickly.  But they only do this when you're in fast-forwards or rewind mode.
In playback, it is actually the capstan shaft which pulls the tape along.  It rotates very rapidly, and by means of a pinch roller or some similar device, the tape is squeezed against the capstan and dragged along.  It is providing the force to make the tape play, not the spool motors, and it does this at a constantly-controlled speed, usually with a flywheel to ensure it remains constant.
However, the spool motors are not idle.  If they were, the tape would have nowhere to go and would just spill everywhere.  When playing forwards, the right spooling motor will be operating at a low level, just enough to ensure that the tape gets pulled onto the spool.  Interestingly, the left motor (rewind) will also be operating.  This sounds weird, but it's actually doing that to make sure the tape stays taut throughout the entire transport.

Anyway, that's how tape drives work. 

There are variations, e.g. a single motor to handle winding in both directions (common in cheap cassette decks).  This cuts cost but makes the mechanism more complex.  There is also Lyrec's very weird 'FRED' machine, which has no capstan.  It does use the spooling motors to pull the tape around, just like I said they didn't.  However, it's designed for editing only, not playback and not recording, and the sound quality is supposed to suck badly as a result.

[Tapewolf]

Here is the machine, finally in its stand:


http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/tape/a807_stand.jpg

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

... You attached a level bar across the top of the stand? Nice touch.

[Tapewolf]

... You attached a level bar across the top of the stand? Nice touch.

Yes, the machine itself doesn't have a VU meter.  I'd have preferred a proper meter-bridge, but I imagine those are difficult to get hold of on their own.  To make this work, the stand is actually backwards - since the 19" rack fixings on the front seemed ideal to fix the meter to.  I had to obtain two outrageously-overpriced black metal struts from B&Q.  They were originally intended as cooker trimming but they work, though it tends to wobble a bit if knocked.
Still, it gives me some idea of how hard I'm hitting the tape.

One channel seems to be low, so I'll have to do a full line-up at some point.  Sadly I can't actually record anything yet as I bought the wrong gender of cable (probably because it's nigh impossible to tell which XLR is male and which is female).