Hi all,

I have just bought this beautiful reel-to-reel tape recorder Akai 630. It's in my livingroom and I just love the looks of it, and the sound is amazing!
I have something strange though; maybe one of you knows a solution.
I hooked the recorder to my stereo and did some tests: recorded from a CD, and played it back. Sound was great, signals perfectly in balance.
However, after one hour of recording I played back and I noticed that the left channel was guite a bit lower in volume than the right.
I noticed that when looking at the volume on the VU-meters while recording with switch on "source" both channels have the same volume, and switch on "tape" shows right volume normal and left volume low.
So the signal that enters the recorder is ok, but the signal on the tape is not.

Has anyone of you come across this before and do you have a solution?

Maybe the tape was not in good shape (although it looked good to me) and the beginning of the tape recorded better than 350 meters further on ...

Suggestions are more than welcome!

Regards, Frank

Hi,

for those interested; the cause of the strange volume balance was the recording head. I cleaned it and now I am back online.

Success if you encounter this problem.

Frank

yup...iron oxide build up is not your friend....neither is a magnetized tape path. glad you got her fixed!

630 is a nice looking deck.:)
Glad you figured it out Frank.