Yes! Cleaning and demagnetizing worked!

[Mr. Lin]

A lot of you know about and have been trying to help me with my recent Nak issues. I've been doing a lot of recording lately, and suddenly the last couple tapes I made didn't sound right at all. The first was a Denon HD7 that I just got, so I attributed the problem to a bad tape. But it became clear there was nothing wrong with the Denon tape when I recorded on a new Akai tape and the problem was worse. The issue at hand was random blurring and skipping of sound, for lack of a better description (it's hard to explain), and it made the tapes totally unacceptable to me because I'm a very picky listener.

So you all unanimously recommended that I first clean the heads, capstan, and pinch roller, then demagnetize the heads. Note that until now I've been using one of those cheap Radioshack cleaner/demagnetizer in a cassette deals, which probably has been doing little to help the situation. My real demagnetizer from MCM arrived a couple days ago, so tonight I took the BX-1 down to the basement (away from all my tapes and other components), demagnetized it according to directions, re-recorded the same CD I used last on the same kind of tape. I'm listening to it now, sounds perfect.

Thank you all for your help again, I'm very relieved this wasn't a bigger problem. Now it's back to obsessive recording for me!


Dave

[Acoustic]

That's great! :-)<- Yep.. now it's time for some recordin' and listenin'.

[Mr. Lin]

That's great! :-)<- Yep.. now it's time for some recordin' and listenin'.

I'm already on the listening part!

[Web Police]

Good news indeed. :)

[NAD613]

Glad to hear it worked.

[Des-Lab]

Glad to hear that's all it was. Enjoy some tunes and definitely the Denon tapes!

[Scorpion8]

Fabulous! You learn, we learn, and we all become a better family all at the same time. Glad to hear you're happy again.

[stuwee]

Definately good enough advice from one with great ears for me! Now to just do it x3, maybe 4, oops, forgot the RtR, then some tapes from the many great deals out there. Watch out ya'll*reelspin*
Craig

[Mr. Lin]

Yep, it would definitely be bad if the whole recording thing suddenly came to a screeching halt, even though I'm planning on upgrading to a much better deck soon. And yes, I'm certainly going to be using those Denon tapes soon.

I listened to the Dvorak 9th Symphony tape I made last night on a Akai GX and it sounded good. I did that first because it's exactly the same CD and cassette I used just before cleaning and demagnetizing, and at that point the recording came out quite bad. So it was a sucessful test. Then I put Rachmaninov's Piano Concertos 2 and 3 on a Fuji DR-II, which I'm listening to at the moment. Very nice, it came out pretty faithful to the CD, but with a touch of warmth, which could be attributed to the tube preamp, I don't know.