Hello all,

I am new here, and fairly inexperienced with analog tape. I have a Pioneer RT-707 that was in storage for a while, in a not-always-so-dry location. A couple years ago before being put away, I had it gone over by a professional audio service that came recommended to me for work on such machines. I don't have the paperwork here in front of me, but I think they found no hard faults with the machine and so just cleaned, demagnetized, and calibrated the unit. I didn't use it after I got it back from them as it went right into storage.

Just today I bought a new reel of RMG SM-911 tape and had a go at recording onto the tape for the first time. The playback was rather noisy and at first I thought I had the levels set too low. Then I tried monitoring the tape out and I realized that the noise was coming from the playback electronics, as the noise was just as loud when the tape wasn't moving at all. Both channels seem to be more or less equally noisy. It is not crackling from noisy pots as I tried adjusting the output level pots in the rear of the unit and the noise simply got correspondingly louder or softer but no crackles. The noise is a nice smooth hiss like white noise. It is not coming from some other part of the audio chain as I am going straight into a Denon integrated amp and when I power down the Pioneer, the noise completely goes away. Oddly enough, if I turn the mic input levels up from zero to max, the noise does increase (even though I am not recording and the tape isn't moving). I would have thought the mic levels would not affect the playback electronics! I can imagine perhaps one playback channel having a noisy transistor or something, but the noise seems to be about the same in both channels. Any suggestions? I am new to analog tape machines and I was hoping this might be a common problem (with an easy fix).

thanks,
Dave

A slight correction to the original post - I noticed upon further inspection that the noise goes away when I switch *into* tape monitor mode, not the other way round. So the noise isn't coming from the playback circuits, but from the input circuits. I think the noise is being generated somewhere just after the input level control, as turning this all the way up or down has little effect. I managed to find the schematic online - I will keep working on the problem. Any suggestions most welcome!

thanks,
Dave