My first real teardown and repair happened in the mid-70s when my father, an air force electrical technician brought home a reel to reel tape machine mounted in a 6 ft rack. He said if I can get it working I could use, which was a god send to me as I was in a garage band and all we had to record on was a mono cassette deck. I asked him where I should start, and he suggested the library. I picked up some basic electronics books at the public library and luckily the base library had a technical manual for a tape deck, not the same manufacturer, but was good enough to give me clues on what to look for. As I tore into the unit and would ask my dad questions he would always say it sounds like you’re on the right track, but why do you think so, so I would have to distill what I had read and tested and explained the reasoning to him. This went on for about a month and I ended up replacing some capacitors, internal fuses and re-soldered some loose wiring. Cleaned and adjusted the motors and heads and wired it up for left and right microphone inputs. I borrowed a couple of microphones from our school music department, connected my stereo and turned it on, sweet success. It actually worked! and sounded good. I used the deck for several years, transferred a lot of my records to tape so I could go for hours without having to bother with the record player. In my late twenties I finally found out why my dad didn’t give me much guidance. He was in military intelligence and the technician position was just a cover, he didn’t have a clue about what was wrong with it and got an education through my explanations.

My first real teardown and repair happened in the mid-70s when my father, an air force electrical technician brought home a reel to reel tape machine mounted in a 6 ft rack. He said if I can get it working I could use, which was a god send to me as I was in a garage band and all we had to record on was a mono cassette deck. I asked him where I should start, and he suggested the library. I picked up some basic electronics books at the public library and luckily the base library had a technical manual for a tape deck, not the same manufacturer, but was good enough to give me clues on what to look for. As I tore into the unit and would ask my dad questions he would always say it sounds like you’re on the right track, but why do you think so, so I would have to distill what I had read and tested and explained the reasoning to him. This went on for about a month and I ended up replacing some capacitors, internal fuses and re-soldered some loose wiring. Cleaned and adjusted the motors and heads and wired it up for left and right microphone inputs. I borrowed a couple of microphones from our school music department, connected my stereo and turned it on, sweet success. It actually worked! and sounded good. I used the deck for several years, transferred a lot of my records to tape so I could go for hours without having to bother with the record player. In my late twenties I finally found out why my dad didn’t give me much guidance. He was in military intelligence and the technician position was just a cover, he didn’t have a clue about what was wrong with it and got an education through my explanations.