Someone wrote the other day and asked:
"Could you please tell me how to properly align the heads?"
Here's our answer:
Do you have a tape loop with test tones (sine wave at various frequencies) and the ability to measure the output? That's the only way to do it correctly.
That said, the better answer is "Don't Panic!" Tape head alignment is highly over-rated on tape echoes.
On reel-to-reel and tape cassette recorders, it was important, since you wanted to make sure that what you recorded, say, four years ago, would play back and sound the same.
But since the tape loop is being written to over and over, if they're slightly off, it doesn't matter, since it's playing back what it just wrote < 1 minute ago. Make sense?
It takes about 15-20% variation off alignment before you start losing certain freq. ranges. And even then, given the units, there's already so much freq. loss which acts like compression and they have to get really bad before you'd notice the loss. We've had heads that were very out of alignment and they still passed the tests with the test tape loop.
If you still want to try, there's a trick using a laser level that you can at least make sure all the heads are aligned the same by lighting it across the heads. But if the one you chose to align the rest to and it's off, they'll all be off. That said, having them all identically mis-aligned will sound better than having them randomly misaligned. Not optimal, but close.
Got the following request for (free) info today. We've decided that we will respond to requests if we either feel they'd make a good blog entry or if someone wants to pay us for our time and experience.
Really honest, we are not mean people, but none of us at The Sound-O-Mat of us is rich, far from it, we're all just getting by. We promise if any of us every gets rich, we'll be happy to answer questions all day for free. Scouts honor.
So here is the question we got, reworded a bit since the writer probably doesn't speak English as a first language:
"I have a Roland SRE-555 and if it has been off for a couple of hours and I start it up after its been running a couple of minutes it slows down the tape speed.If I direct restart it it speeds up again but slows down after a minute it gets worse as longer it runs. If I pull out the pinch roller so it not in contact with the capstan, the motor speeds up. I can also pull out the roller a bit so its still in contact with the tape and capstan (lighter tension) then it also speeds up.
I checked the pinch roller tension and it's approx 1 kg. I have been cleaning everything,of course changed tape loop etc. Do you know what can be wrong?
Has the motor lost it's power or could it be the pinch roller that is bad?"
Without having the Roland here, there's really no way for us to tell. In general, it's good advice to make sure the tape heads are cleaned and demagnetized, and the tape is new or in good condition to start with, which it sounds like this guy did.
He probably answered the question himself, which is that it works fine when he pulls back the pinch roller so it's probably too tight and needs to be loosened. Here's the list of suggestions made as to how to fix it or what might be wrong, in the order that is most likely the cause of his problem:
1. Pinch roller tension needs to be decreased.
2. Motor is dying and needs to be repaired (if possible) or replaced.
3. Bad capacitor supplying power to motor can't hold enough charge.
4. Capstan from motor needs to be cleaned and perhaps "etched" (unsmoothed)
5. Pinch roller needs to cleaned and perhaps "roughed" (unsmoothed)
Please note: We do not have any replacement parts, but if a motor can be removed, the later Sayama/Pioneer motors used in the Roland tape echoes can some times be repaired, so if you can pull out your motor and mail it to us, we might be able to fix it.
We have repaired 2 out of 3 to date but cannot refund money if we cannot fix it (we spend time which we need to be paid for whether or not it can be fixed.) So if you have a broken motor you want us to try to fix or want to sell to us, please contact us.