Tascam 302 MKII

[miner]

Just purchased a used Tascam 302 MKII on the 'bay from a church. I paid $66 (the amount sort of scared me - goo thing one more 6 wasn't involved). Any suggestions on what to do to bring up to good condition. I do have a Discwasher capstan cleaner, head cleaner and head demagnetizer from years ago. Should I spend the $80 for a check up? From my research this appears to be a decent player.

[miner]

Any help or comments truly appreciated.

[Fred Sanford]

Closest I have experience with is the 202 MKIII (reliable but average sound, dual auto-reverse, 2 heads/1 motor per deck) and 112 MKII (very good, reliable, 2 heads 3 motor deck). An idea of the sound quality difference would be that they're both rated from 25-19,000Hz, but the 112 is +/- 3 dB where the 202 is +/- 10 dB on some of the spec sheets! It's also obvious that the speed is not as stable as the 112, but I don't really expect that much from the dual auto-reverse decks.

The 202 is useful to have in the rack for mobile PA work, raw stereo recordings from line in or mic in, ~3 hrs untended record time. The 112 is in use for archiving cassettes to an Alesis Masterlink.

Your 302 (63-18,000 Hz +/- 3 dB) has some cool features that can be useful in a live sound environment (like a church system), and the manual's on line:

http://www.tascam.com/products/302mkii.html

Hope that helps.

je