your thoughts on yamaha k-2000

[Analogtape]

has anyone owned and listened to yamaha k-2000?

[TEACster]

Hi, by coincidence I picked up a K-2000M last week. This is apparently the professional version of Yamaha's flagship model of the mid eighties, with balanced as well as unbalanced in/outputs on the back. There's very little info on the net about the K-2000 and they seem to be a bit scarce.

It's an unassuming looking unit and the internals are very nicely laid out. It has two motors and three heads. The erase head is sprung, presumably to apply back tension to the tape. The machine automatically calibrates each tape for bias, when you press record. It has Dolby (no HX) and DBX and pitch control.
It's a direct drive model and the only rubber in it is found on the pinchwheel and on the idler wheel. On mine, the idler tire was completely dried out. In order to try out the rest of the machine, I had to replace it with a rubber band (don't laugh, it's only temporary). It plays back quite well, with very good frequency response and low noise levels. When recording however, mine has a hum problem. Seems to be mains hum at a steady -35db. It could be related to a mysterious button labelled "Monitoring Erase". No idea what that's about, but it doesn't feel that it's connected to anything. It certainly doesn't seem to do anything.

Hope this helps and I too would appreciate some further comments, especially concerning the mystery button!