Here is something I thought members may be interested in seeing…
I found that on one of the players i am repairing, i had problems with a couple of tracks not working. Machine was showing continual F in the tracks.
Here you can see the individual head gaps in the head construction. The amount of engineering that must have gone into this technology is really mind blowing.
You can see the far two gaps to the right don’t look as deep or sharp as the other 7 to the left. And you can also see the two wider gaps to the far left for analog playback.
Possibly this is head wear that has caused this gap deterioration. Unfortunately the user did play lots of analogue cassettes on it which may explain the wear.
Thank you for sharing. They developed a special coating to protect the head from wear, one source claims it was only necessary for analog tapes. I have seen a value that playing only DCC has double the lifetime of only playing CC, but this could have been to be legally on the safe side.
Type I in hot and humid conditions can also cause corrosion, this is one reason why you might see different types of wear.
We have our recommendation to use the analog tape only for short tests for this very reason.
