I appreciate that you want to help find what is wrong with decks and I would be happy to find out but I don't think we gonna solve that mystery.
It's about two RS-B965 that are modified. 6 transistors on the input are replaced with resistors (leaving transistor base disconnected). Otherwise than that nothing except replacing some IC's with some better and placing 0.1uF caps between V+ and V-.
According to SM a decks should have input impedance 47K.
As I wrote, I'm not expecting anyone to find a problem ( would be both happy and surprised if someone could), but wondering if infinite impedance somehow affects decks functionality.
Answer on your question: transport is not engaged, deck is ON and in SOURCE mode, nothing else.