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- May 14, 2014
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- 2,289
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- No such things as bad days, just bad moments
I thought Nando and maybe others would like an account of what can be inside an 8 track cartridge made by Ampex. Not all by any means will have the "Degenerated Pinch Roller Syndrom" but some do. I've encountered it two or three times before and have corrected it by making a new pinch roller or more accurately, resurfacing the original pinch roller hub with new rubber. The tape in question: Rolling Stones - Through the Past Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2).
Looks innocent enough
But this sticker makes me cringe a bit
No disappointment, it has the most complex assembly of pieces of any 8 track
And this is/was the pinch roller
Gonna make a new one out of this
Or rather, the black inside part turned inside out
First play test it warbled caused by (best guess scenario) an insufficiently wide inside roller diameter so the cartridge had to come apart again (and these particular shell halves were the absolute hardest I've yet to pry apart) for more masking tape to get wrapped around the hub, making it wider. Put the parts back in (notice the crescent shaped white plastic thing to the left of the pinch roller) in preparation to snap the halves together - again
Second play test and it sounded better but that crescent thing would not allow the splice to pass. So, I'm going to pitch the whole shell and transfer the tape into another once I've scrubbed its label off. This being the case, a bonus with Nando's tape was that its label literally fell off in my hands intact
There were other tapes with interesting problems that preceded this one repair wise but I didn't think to take any pictures. The one where I had to purposely unspool 3/4's of the tape pack into a zig zag back and forth across my floor to minimize tangles for instance but it would have been too hard to document.
Looks innocent enough
But this sticker makes me cringe a bit
No disappointment, it has the most complex assembly of pieces of any 8 track
And this is/was the pinch roller
Gonna make a new one out of this
Or rather, the black inside part turned inside out
First play test it warbled caused by (best guess scenario) an insufficiently wide inside roller diameter so the cartridge had to come apart again (and these particular shell halves were the absolute hardest I've yet to pry apart) for more masking tape to get wrapped around the hub, making it wider. Put the parts back in (notice the crescent shaped white plastic thing to the left of the pinch roller) in preparation to snap the halves together - again
Second play test and it sounded better but that crescent thing would not allow the splice to pass. So, I'm going to pitch the whole shell and transfer the tape into another once I've scrubbed its label off. This being the case, a bonus with Nando's tape was that its label literally fell off in my hands intact
There were other tapes with interesting problems that preceded this one repair wise but I didn't think to take any pictures. The one where I had to purposely unspool 3/4's of the tape pack into a zig zag back and forth across my floor to minimize tangles for instance but it would have been too hard to document.
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