Re: radio tape deck

[Dennis Lou <dlou@domain.elided>]

>Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 10:00:44 EST
>From: Loosej@domain.elided
>Subject: radio tape deck
>
>In a message dated 12/16/01 1:02:09 AM Central Standard Time, 
>owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:
>> Does anyone have any tips on a tape deck that, rather than 
>> playing tapes, starts pulling the media out of the cassette?  
>
>  Sounds like your tape deck needs some minor maintenance.  You need to clean 
>it.  The rubber pinch rollers are dirty.  You need a Q-tip and some cleaner 
>(try Radio Shaft).  The pinch rollers are those rubber wheels around the tape 
>head that help pull the tape through.  

Actually, it's my understanding that the pinch rollers are the primary
tape movers.  The take-up reels are there just to take-up and reel in
what the pinch rollers spit out.

Because of this, the pinch rollers are often driven directly by the
motor while the take-up reels are driven via a belt and pulley.  A broken
belt could also (some would say "more likely cause") tape eating decks.
A good test would be to insert a cassette with the guts removed and try
to see if everything turns as expected.

In any case, this is the 21st century and...

>  By the way, my son just last night turned me onto a very cool MP3 player.  
>It is shaped like a cassette, so that, from your computer,  you can download 
>many MP3 tunes onto it then just put it into your cassette deck, like a tape, 
>and it plays your MP3 songs !  No wires and stuff all over the car....Way 
>Cool !!

...in-dash MP3 players are getting to be quite prolific and reasonably
priced.  A CDR or CDRW can hold about 10 hours of near CD quality music
or about 80 hours of language tapes (assuming they are converted to mono
and downsampled to 11Khz) in MP3 format.  May as well get with the times.

-Dennis
'85 GTV6

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