DCC900 dropping out like crazy after recapping

Recorders, Players, etc.
1

So I’ve had this DCC900 since 1998. I bought it as clearance for $25 (!) and a Philips employee gave me 3 tapes when they found them at a warehouse. Way back in 2000 that DCC player was working flawlessly. Nowadays, not so much.

I found it in my attic the other day after watching a video about R/W board. So I plugged it in and was greeted with some recordings I had made 25 years ago. It played ok. But i only played for a few seconds to confirm it was working.

So i took it apart and indeed, two caps were starting to leak. I replaced all electrolytics. I used mostly ceramic caps for the job (since I have a lot of SMD parts), but for the 63uF ones I replaced them with 100uF, and the 2.2uF NP too.

After putting everything back, it did play. It plays analog just fine, and it was playing DCC for a while. So I tried recording. Using an optical cable from my PC I recorded at 48KHz, hit rewind, play, it worked. woo.

so i tried recording a little more. and that’s when everything started failing. After those few recordings it no longer plays. But I’m not sure if it’s something else. I don’t know if it’s the pinch rollers, the felt pad, or an electrical problem. I tried service mode and in All errors mode i just see random garbage in a known recorded part of the tape. This is after trying to clean the pad which, i think, just made it worse since the pad is a little “deformed” now (i assume it’s not making proper contact against the head).

When playing, though, it does detect the parts that are recorded at 44k as 44k, and the B-side of the tape, which i recorded at 48k, is detected as 48k. It also (sometimes) stops at the markers. It even detects marker number.

Should I stop what I’m doing now and somehow try to find a “known good” tape? The other two tapes I have are somewhere in the house, lost to time, sealed in their original package. I haven’t seen them in years.

I think it may not be related to the recapping. It COULD be a broken flex cable but I don’t think so. I don’t remember sticking anything magnetic near the head.

Anything else I can try before trying to buy a new DCC tape?

2

Well, against my experience, I decided to start messing with knobs and see what changed.

I decided to try changing the azimuth adjustment first. After some messing with it, it actually started playing. I had severe drop outs, like several seconds. After touching the azimuth i had choppy audio. So I kept turning the screw and it kept improving.

I also took a look at the tape speed adjustment, and read level. After touching these 3 my 25 year old tape started playing just fine. There is only an occasional drop out but nothing major. ALL ERRORS mode shows 00 00000000 with random 1-track errors here and there.

Recording is a different problem. It records, but it keeps dropping out. I think this may be a mechanical problem (pinch rollers) as playing a tape with errors may be more “forgiving” but writing with errors + reading with errors isn’t going to work.

Adjusting the record current helped but not significantly.

I think I’ll order a set of belts and pinch rollers and see.