244 will not play/record

[samj]

Hi all.

Today I received my 244 in the mail and have had a thrilling day of use to say the least. Man, what a machine. I’m writing though as I’ve sadly reached an issue:

When I go to press play, the tape head goes up, the tape sits still in this position for about 3 seconds, then the tape head goes down. The system rewinds and fast forwards just fine, but something else entirely happens when I either play or try to record. Any ideas on what gives?

I’ve tried to troubleshoot earlier, but a lot of answers were to service it/replace the belt, which the seller had actually done about two weeks ago prior to listing it and me buying it. Is there an easy fix to this? Or is this an issue with the way in which it was serviced?

Thanks all.

 

[SkywaveTDR]

The easy fix is observe what is happening and reverse the problem. A new belt does not mean a correct belt- the motor could be burned up, power supply issues who knows. You need to approach the problem like a Technician otherwise there are no easy answers. The pinch rollers in these deck are known for going soft. 246 and 234 as well.

 

[gbkd80]

Mine was doing exactly this, and mine turned out to be a crack across the PCB above the cassette. Check that circuit board and make sure. I ended up making 2 jumpers across the broken trace and all was great again.

 

[SkywaveTDR]

The mechanism stall like we used to call it that cam belt is slipping and can not cause the cam gear to get to the correct position and then the deck is programmed that after three seconds it goes back to stop mode. The mechanism being full of bad old grease doe snot help this at all. The mechanism if cleaned and greased with Lubriplate 105 will respond much better and spray clean the feedback pot and oil the top bearing of the cam motor with AMSoil which always helps the decks I work on every time.
AMSoil is the Signature 0W30 car synthetic oil I have used in decks for some years now and was found to give a wow and flutter spec to an old A2000R of .02%. Nothing else has ever done that.