Did a complete 440A transport alignment and survived

[Paolo Cipollone]

Well, I almost did it. Both pinch rollers were glazed and hardened so I decided it was time to change them. Since I was at it I completely dismantled the transport, cleaned and relubed thoroughly, changed the belts and reassembled. Now it was time to realign. I have no gauges, and aligning a system consisting of four components that can be calibrated individually with respect to azimuth, height and tilt is a lot complicated, to say the least. But it can be done. Right now tapes created on at least twenty different quality decks in the last thirtyfive years require only very minor azimuth adjustments - many are spot on and in perfect accordance, both sides. Absolutely no damage done to the tapes. I only find that sometimes azimuth is slightly off at the very beginning of the tape (I mean the first 30 seconds, 1 minute). I don't know at this point if this can only be related to tape skew or uneven torque (I remember Nakamichi advising to check azimuth at the center of the test tape) or I have still to refine the calibration. I wonder what others think.

Thanks in advance,
Paolo Cipollone