The big difference little cassette deck belts can make

the variety of cassette tapes you can find  is amazing everything from music to listen   to while you're smoking your parliament  lights to music to help you stop smoking when i got my new teac 1200 cassette deck  and started testing it i noticed that the   left side deck had less wow and flutter than  the right side deck both were better than   teac's official specification for it so i can't  complain but i wanted to find out what was the   cause of the difference between the two decks so  i opened it up and i swapped the belts between   the left and right side decks and now the right  side deck is the one with less wow and flutter   so clearly the belts play an important  role in the performance of this deck so that got me thinking about the possibility  of an easy upgrade for this would be to   install better quality and more consistently  manufactured belts than what it comes with   so i took off the original  belts and i measured them   as accurately as i could and i ordered what i  think are the correct sizes for it these are   evg belts you can find them from various  suppliers online i got them from marvac   electronics which has their own website  marvac.com or you can order from them on ebay so here are the two sizes i ordered which  hopefully are correct scx 5.1 and scy 4.2   this one is a 5.1 inch by .048 inch square  belt and this one is a 4.2 inch by .034   inch square belt i got two sets of them to do both  decks and they're only a couple dollars each so   this whole set of belts here cost me less  than twenty dollars including shipping so i'm first going to test the belts it came with   then i'll install these new belts and i'll see  if it makes any improvement in wow and flutter   this is the left side deck with the belts  that are originally on the right side deck   which are the ones that are not as good so you  can see it's measuring around .16 to 0.17 wrms and here's the right side deck  with the belts that used to be   in the left side deck and you can see it's  doing much better at around 0.10 percent   wrms so i would want both of the decks to be  this good if i can so that's why i'm going to try   replacing the belts with those new ones and see  if i can get both of them to be as good as this replacing the belts in this deck is  super easy there's only two belts   there's the main one going from the flywheel  to the motor and you notice the spindle on the   motor has two grooves on it the belt goes on  the one that's closer to the rear of the deck   it's a lot easier to replace if you unscrew  the mounting bracket for the motor although on   this side you probably can get away with doing it  with just a hook tool to hook it onto the spindle   but on the other side the clearance is not as  good so you probably will need to remove the motor then once you get this belt off you  can get access to the other belt   which goes from this groove on the inner  side of the flywheel to this spindle up here now i think mostly this main belt is  what's responsible for the wiring flutter   because it directly drives the capstan  which is what actually moves the tape   along this one just drives to take up  reel which is not quite as important but   just for the sake of completeness  i'll replace both of these belts here are the original belts i took off these  are the better ones in terms of wow and flutter   and here are the new belts i'll be installing to  replace them i compared them the new ones are just   a little bit smaller in diameter than the  original ones but of course they're going   to get stretched out because these are  brand new never been used so hopefully   these are the correct sizes and they'll just  stretch out a little bit once they get used now you don't have to worry about whether or  not you get them perfectly straight on the   pulleys because they're square belts so they'll  tend to straighten themselves out as it spins so before i go changing the ones on  the other side i'm gonna test these   and see what difference it makes well here are the new belts  installed and actually got worse   it's actually even a little bit  worse than the worst of the two   sets of original belts but i'm going to  try swapping the smaller of the two belts so i swapped the smaller of the two belts back to  the original one while the main belt going from   the motor to the flywheel is the new one and that  made a surprising improvement it's almost as good   as the original belts were now it could be  that the new belts i ordered are simply a   little bit too small because i wasn't  exactly sure when i was measuring them   how much you're supposed to stretch them out  so i'm going to try ordering the next size   larger of these belts and see if that's  a better match for the original belts "the belt is one whole shy of  perfection" ... "ridiculous!" in the meantime here are two tapes  i already recorded on this deck   this first one is on tdk sa-90 tape  and this is a really excellent tape   sounds excellent it was able to handle peaks up to  6 db on the meter with no appreciable distortion   so this deck really does well with tdk sa  type 2 high bias tape but surprisingly also   a very good performer is this radio shack  hd tape which i believe is a rebadged maxell   ud ii tape also type 2 high bias this one also  did very good on this deck and yes as you can tell   i'm a big fan of using my brother p-touch to do  these labels i got quite carried away on this one so here's the rundown of all of these main capstan  drive belts i tested all of them on the right side   deck and in conjunction with the original teac  smaller belt so that's not a factor in this the original teac belt that was  originally on the left side deck   turned out to be the best one in terms of wow and  flutter these wow and flutter measurements are   all in wrms and the original stock teac  belt that was in the left side deck   turned out to be the best  at around .08 to .10 percent   the next was this prb belt distributed by evg in  their scx 5.1 size it measured around 0.12 to 0.14   percent and then was the right side original teac  belt it measured around point .14 to .16 percent   and the worst was the other new prb belt  and measured around .15 to .17 percent so you can see there's quite a variation  here even between the two original teac belts   and one the new prb belts was pretty much  right in the middle between them so i think   all these are probably from the same manufacturer  and they just don't have very good quality control   that's why they're such a large variation and why  some people they get a deck with one of these good   belts in it and they think it's perfectly fine  and some people are unlucky they get one of these   decks and it has one of these inferior belts  in it and they have noticeable wow and flutter so this definitely demonstrates that  there's quite a bit of room for improvement   and the belts that are used in these decks if  they could somehow improve their quality control   and all get them as good as this one it could  make a measurable and audible improvement in   the performance of these decks but as things  stand right now if you're unlucky and your deck   comes with a not so good belt in it replacing it  with an aftermarket one may or may not improve the   performance it could make it better or could  actually make it worse so i guess you have to   do what i did and buy two of them and hopefully  one of them is going to be better than the other i'm going to do some more digging and see if  i can find another supplier for these belts   which hopefully will claim to have better  quality than these ubiquitous prb belts   that have pretty much cornered the market if  i can find something better than these and   they're not too terribly expensive i'll  give it a try and see how it turns out now as for the smaller of the two belts used in  these decks what i originally thought was the   correct size clearly was not correct because when  i put this belt on it felt very tight going on   and when i tried it out it made the performance  much worse than the original belt that the deck   came with so clearly these belts  are too tight not the correct size the next step up is scy 4.4 however that's a very  uncommon size and some vendors even claim that   has been discontinued so i stepped up to  the next size above that scy 4.6 which is   a very common size and is readily available  so i think this is actually the correct size   for the smaller belt and again i  bought two of them just to compare i'm going to test these two new belts  and the two original belts the deck   came with and see how they compare in terms of  wow and flutter and all of them are going to   be tested with the best of the original larger  size belts so this will be an equal comparison michelle put   your headphones on oh i'm doing my work  i'm MC'ing all right listening to this   hey this is wonderful didn't she remix this for  the beatles i suspect what happened was that   they recorded this on quarter track tape which  had something recorded in the other direction   and when they played it back they probably sent  it to the mastering lab when this record was made   and they accidentally played it on a half track  tape recorder thus picking up the track going   in the opposite direction and they figured that  this is the correct mix and this is what they put   on the record this mistake wasn't made on the cd  this was made in the original release now if you   play it the other way around irwin it will say  paul superapple is dead i buried paul superapple so here's the verdict with the smaller  belts there was still some variance in   wow and flutter between them but not nearly  as much as with the main capstan drive belt   so i don't think you would notice  any big difference between these   unless you have a really good ear because  the range was only around 0.08 at the best   to around 0.11 at the worst and with these  results being so similar i can conclusively   say that this is the correct size scy 4.6 if  you need to replace one of these smaller belts so if you have one of these decks experimenting  with different belts may be an inexpensive and   relatively easy way to improve its performance  there are other upgrades i have in mind for   this deck such as replacing the motors i ordered  these new old stock matsushita motors from ebay   they took about two months to come in  from bulgaria but they finally arrived   and i also ordered this pacific stereo  motor which claims to be the highest   quality cassette deck motor available today but  i'll save experimenting with these motors for   another video because it's quite a bit  more advanced and it requires soldering   so i wouldn't recommend messing  around with the motors for a beginner and to be honest i don't even think this  is necessary because just by experimenting   with different belts i was able to improve the  performance of this deck to a level that i'm   entirely happy with it's not  the best cassette deck i own   but it should be more than good  enough for most people especially   as the prices of high quality vintage  cassette decks continue to increase and i'll leave you with a little bit  of wfmu's incorrect music program   which i recorded back in march 1998  on this standard type one tape with no   dolby noise reduction and i'll be playing it with  the teac deck's dynamic noise reduction turned on

Channel: VWestlife

Views: 57,984

Keywords: teac, w1200, w-1200, tascam, 202mkvii, cd-a580, cda580, ad850, ad-850, cassette, tape, deck, belt, belts, replace, replacing, upgrade, upgrading, wow, flutter, speed, stability, test, wfgui, wfmu, incorrect music, irwin chusid

Id: eJmLdS820vo

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021