Hi,

I recently dusted off an old Allied Solid State TR-1035 reel-to-reel tape
recorder (circa 1969) in an attempt to transfer some old tapes to the
computer. After fixing mechanical problems, it worked fine, until, after
about an hour of playing, the motor died.

The motor was quite hot. Even after cooling, it would no longer start on
its own when the unit was powered up. You could start it spinning by hand,
but it spun very slowly and didn't have enough torque, so it would stop as
soon as you engaged the drive mechanism. If you started it the wrong way,
it went faster, but still probably not as fast as it once went.

We bought another similar-looking Allied tape recorder from eBay, and
after facing insurmountable drive-mechanism problems, we took its motor,
identical to the failed one, and installed it in the first recorder. Lo
and behold, it worked great... until after about 5 minutes of playing, the
second motor failed, in exactly the same way as the first one had.

The puzzling thing is, the second motor was not at all hot when it failed.
Moreover, it had been run in the second recorder for much longer than 5
minutes at a time without incident.

I believe this is a synchronous motor. It only spins at one speed, tape
speed is adjusted mechanically. It's labelled "M536D / 120V." It has
three wires, red, green, and yellow. Red and green are hooked up to a big
1.5uF capacitor. Red is also connected to the primary coil of the
transformer, the other lead of which is connected to the power cord.
Yellow is connected to the same power terminal via, in parallel, a
tape-detector switch and a component labelled "0.1(K) 400 JB." I can
describe more of the wiring if necessary.

My questions a Is there any way either of these motors can be
salvaged? Is there a way the first recorder could be causing motors to
fail? Could it be fixed? And failing that, does anyone know a good
audio-tape to CD service?

Thanks for your help,
--
Tom Felker,
http://vlevel.sourceforge.net - Stop fiddling with the volume knob.

In order to understand recursion you must first understand recursion.