Pioneer CT-F7272 with issue... help!?

[JRosenb88]

I have a Pioneer CT-F7272 that doesn't like to play this one tape very well. I have only tried about 4 tapes as i just got it but on one side of this one tape it won't play when I push start (most of the time).

I hear the motor go and everything should be good but it doesn't spin the tape. I opened it up to take a look and see if it's anything obvious but I really don't know what I'm looking at. Nothing seems obviously wrong.

I have noticed that it does take about a second to start playing at full speed. I haven't ever noticed this on other decks.

Could it be the tape being bad? It works fine in my other Pioneer cassette player.

I'm open to any and all ideas (as long as it doesn't require much disassembly)

Thanks in advance!

 

[felix_katze]

I had a similar problem, and the answer is two parts.

Deck needed good going through. Rebuilt motor, lubed the bearing and cleaned and lubed all the spinny bits. Better, but still not quite there. The tape would randomly slow down at a certain point, regardless of the deck.

The thing that fixed it fully, was transferring the tape into a new shell. For whatever reason.

 

[JRosenb88]

Hmmmm the potential seller of the unit felt that it may be the tape itself. After all it's my mothers Grateful Dead tape and she played it... A LOT.
I figured the slow would be a lubrication issue of some sort. Not really what I wanted to hear.... but that's usually the case?

Any other ideas out there?

 

[titanstats]

Hmmmm the potential seller of the unit felt that it may be the tape itself. After all it's my mothers Grateful Dead tape and she played it... A LOT.
I figured the slow would be a lubrication issue of some sort. Not really what I wanted to hear.... but that's usually the case?

Any other ideas out there?

Sounds like it needs belts, all decks that have them need them replaced by now. I don't know about the 7272, but a LOT of Pioneer decks suffer from clutch issues as well, which can be a substantial problem.

 

[duncan]

I figured the slow would be a lubrication issue of some sort. Not really what I wanted to hear.... but that's usually the case?

Cassettes do sometimes get hard to play from a combination of age, wear and storage factors. The tape formulation itself contains a number of chemicals, some of which are supposed to function as lubricants. If those stop working (do they break down, leach out, what? idk) it's sometimes referred to as LOL syndrome - for "Loss Of Lube."

It sounds likely to me that you are looking at both: a deck that could use some mechanical work, and a bad tape.