Porta 05 tape gets stuck and then the machine makes a loud high pitched noise

[Robbert Meijer]

Hello my fellow tascam-owners!

I bought a porta 05 mini-studio from the dutch equivelant of Ebay ''Marktplaats'' and everything kinda seemed to work alright except that the porta seemed to produce a quite low humming noise while i was using it. but when i tried to rewind the tape like i did a couple times before it seemed to get stuck and then the machine made a loud high pitched noise ''not trough the headphones the actual machine itself did that'' i googled it but couldn't figure out for the life of me what the problem was.
i tried it again after that with the same result. is anyone here familiar with this problem? i should say that i'm not a very technical man this is the first classic 4-track that i own.

 

[Arjan P]

Hi, and welcome! First suspect would be the tape itself. Take it out and see whether you can easily turn one spool with a pencil or similar. If that goes smooth, it looks like something mechanical.. Does playback work OK?

 

[Robbert Meijer]

Hello Arjen!

Playback seems to be pretty reliable i had the feeling that there was some slowdown here and there but nothing Major. "Might Have been the Super sensitive pitch control" i'll try the pencil-trick for sure! I'm not sure if i Have another high bias cassette laying around is it possible to use a normal bias one? Also.. the Sound was really quite loud "my phone clocked it at 96db" is it really possible that one jammed cassette causes such a racket?

 

[Arjan P]

Wow, that IS loud, 96 dB! And normal bias tape works for sure, it's simply not optimized for the device. But especially for testing purposes it should be fine..