I'm in the middle of restoring a TEAC A-3340s and am having some problems aligning one of the VU meters.

First, here's some history. The deck had been in storage for 10 years or so when I received it. I've replaced all the electrolytic capacitors, lubed the motors, greased the capstan shaft, replaced the belts, cleaned and demagnetized the heads, verifyed the voltages on the power supply, and checked tension and torque.

Now, I'm trying to align the machine using an MRL tape with a reference fluxivity of 200nWb/m. This machine was designed for 185nWb/m so I'm trying to adjust the VU meters to +1 to set it back to factory specs.

I have the output knobs set at 3 o'clock and have verified the specified output levels on the output jacks. Playing the 1kHz tone on the MRL, I am able to set the meters on channels two through four. But channel one will only adjust as high as -3 on the VU. Something is amiss but I'm not sure where to look without a schematic.

Also I've noticed that the needle on channel one jumps higher than the others when the deck is first turned on.

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Alex

Recently I was trying to adjust my A-3440 and I couldn't get the record level on channel 4 up anywhere near the others. Turned out it was due to a groove worn in the record head and the edge of the tape was riding up over it. Maybe you have simlar at the other side of your playback head? If it was channel 2 or 3, I'd discount that possibility but, since both of us had level issues on channels that are at the edge of the tape, could be the same thing. To prove it, I was able to get the level to normal by applying a slight lift with my fingernail under the edge of the running tape. A head height adjustment fixed it for now (until I get around to new heads or a relap).