I posted this elsewhere but I'll get even better answers here so here we go. I've made some observations and have some questions after refurbishing a mkIII unit. I appreciate everyone's input.
- I recapped the motor board, replaced gear C and tweaked and aligned. Sounding very good but a little brighter on playback than some of my other decks. I wonder why that is?
- Did any of you ever notice a polarity inversion on Record?
- Can someone simplify the VU meters on the unit and how they'e calibrated? The meters need to be a bit lower compared to other VU meters on gear that I've got. I have to back it down or else I'll get distortion, which has been noted a few times by others.
- I find that one input is at least 1db off from the other so I have to hold one input knob and turn the other to get the inputs to match. Not good for OCD people like myself. Anyone else notice this? There doesn't seem to be internal Input pots to tweak and we're stuck with only the front pots.
- I had to slam the right channel Playback EQ pot to get it where it should be. It's set up fine (10khz tone is only 0.2db hotter than a 400hz tone and that's close enough I think) but I'm worried about having to slam that pot. Anyone else experience this? It's literally all the way up with no room to spare to get it to the correct level.
- I also didn't have quite enough room on the front panel Record pot for the Right channel so I turned up the record level pots under the hood to get it where it all should be. It's working fine, just something I noticed.
- I've never regreased a mechanism before so I'm not sure exactly where to clean with IPA and put grease. So far I just looked at where the old grease was then cleaned and replaced it with white lithium grease. Hard to get underneath those metal plates though so I didn't worry much about that.
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