Howdy all!
I posted in the Marketplace a few weeks ago about a new 8mm deck but I figured while I waited for that to go through, I'd fiddle around with my current best deck, the CCD-TRV318.
I did some very minor disassembly (The plastic door and top cover come off with only a couple of screws) and was able to see with better clarity what the issue might be. I am (obviously!) not a tape deck repair person, I've just taken apart a few VHS decks as well as cassette decks, so I'm familiar enough with what's going on to get myself into trouble.
What I've observed with certain tapes is that, upon playback, the tape will start bunching up on the 'take up' side, where the capstan should be pulling the tape back into the shell. This seems to indicate that the tape is being spooled out of the tape faster than the capstan/pinch roller can pull it back into the cassette.
This doesn't happen on every tape, every time, but it's often enough that I can't actually use the deck for any playback. It's already responsible for wrecking a section of one of my project tapes because it had passed my initial testing with a throwaway tape.
I suppose my question is, is this something I can adjust or repair myself? Is there somewhere I can send it for repair? In lieu of heading to eBay and crossing my fingers, the last piece of my workflow is a solid capture deck and I'm at a standstill until that's sorted.
Happy holidays everyone, and thanks in advance for reading!
-Dan