Before diving into this whole thing, I’ll say this first: I am not an expert in fixing old things, more like an amateur who has only managed to fix a Walkman once, and this article is a vent. It’s a story of passion, hope, overestimation of tinkering abilities, and heartbreak (and frustration regarding the amount of manuals that exist online for old things). Buckle up and please take my words with a grain of salt, and possibly popcorn.
The Search
I had been extremely sad and in need of a tape deck for me to record tapes on since I made the recent discovery that the only thing I was recording tapes on before, Taper, a literal mono Panasonic RQ-L335 voice recorder, wasn’t just making dogshit low quality recordings but also would change speed whenever he wanted.
I was fed up and went on a long search to find a proper tape deck that won’t cost my entire life savings, a kidney and my will to live to afford. So I dove into Vendora.gr, a local Greece-only online marketplace for used stuff, with hopes to find my game-changing device of tape joy. Needless to say, most listings were making me lose faith in the vintage stuff buyers’ market for a while, as one half of the listings was overpriced “for parts” or “works sometimes” stuff and the other half was over-curated extremely expensive decks sold for my life savings and indeed a kidney – and it was also a gamble whether they actually worked or not or if they were meant to be behind glass “for collectors” (my ass).
Then, through all the garbage and overpriced shit, I managed to lock eyes with a beautiful TEAC V-33, sold as working and serviced with new belts for only 45€ (that’s 52$ for EagleBurger™). I was flabbergasted, and right as soon as I saw it, I got attached, and I imagined a whole life with it (wedding, kids and all).
I had also asked the seller to test it and everything. I had asked questions about proper playback and recording, the supposed servicing that had been done to it before, and he was very helpful. I was on edge for three days while I waited for it to arrive at the locker so I could pick it up.
Integrating and loving Taris
After some time, I finally got him* (*I say “him” because I tend to project personalities on objects, and this tape deck really gave male vibes to me personally, but people can see it differently). He immediately fit in my environment, worked, and was able to record tapes even!
He even had this beautiful function that made me feel warm, in awe, and screaming inside; he had a completely functional VU meter with glowing green lines that would glow in the dark. I could feel a tear rolling down my leg when I saw this. It was one of the most retrofuturistic things I have seen in person in my entire life.
In my eyes, he was absolutely worthy of being named, so I tried to brainstorm a memorable name for him. I usually name things after their model, brand, personality, or purpose, so my first thought was to name him after something like his brand (TEAC). The first name idea I had gotten was Tearis (TEAC without the “C”), but it sounded dumb, so I Greekified it and it was Taris that stuck. It doesn’t mean anything in particular, but it sounds nice.
I was so happy to have Taris that I actually rearranged my workstation to include him. I had to put Taris in the spot on the workbench where I used to put Mel (my favourite melodica, he is one of my favourite objects ever, and I have an extremely strong connection with him – I’ll dedicate an article to him soon), since Taris was a super useful utility that needed to be on my workstation because of the required proximity to my laptop – which was my sound source for recordings at that time.
Everything clicked beautifully after I used Taris as furniture too; it was as if he was made to be on my workbench, and I was getting aggressively excited to see him. I placed my multi-purpose 70s wooden bowl, a doily, some random crap, my Paperblanks journal (one of the many), my 80s Pino Sylvestre and my Etherington Brothers’ art books on him, and he looked like a gem.
For a while, I felt actually happy and relieved for once. I had gained the ability to make real stereo tapes. I was thrilled with this ability since I also like to make custom J cards and labels, and even add easter eggs in my custom tapes. It was as if I had gotten the key to the door to a whole creative medium (now that I think about it, this is what it was).
Cracks Started Showing
As an autistic person who notices details, it didn’t take me a lot of time to notice issues with Taris. What’s worse is that the issues that I had noticed were noticeable during playback, which means that he was functional and working well, but not quite.
The first thing I noticed that kind of didn’t sit right with me was that Taris was sometimes struggling with fast-forwarding of tapes and would go slow, while his rewinding mechanism worked well and fast. I didn’t think much of it because sometimes I happen to use tapes that are like 50 years old, and they are slightly gritty and slightly more challenging to play than newer or more well-kept ones. I kind of skipped this issue altogether and blamed it on tapes.
Then something kept happening that really got on my nerves: Taris was playing tapes slower than normal, and when he was getting near the end of it, like >70% done, he would change speed AGAIN and speed up slightly. Basically, his speed would change depending on the load. I noticed this because as Taris was recording slowly, my Walkmen would play the tape at a normal speed, and it sounded like nightcore – I like nightcore, but when my whole tape is nightcored permanently, this pisses me off a bit.
My amateur tinkerer diagnosis: The previous person who supposedly serviced Taris slapped incorrect belts in him that don’t create enough torque for him to pull tape properly at the right speed.
For about a week, I tried to turn a blind eye to this problem and tried, alternatively, to change my own input speed to match Taris’ slow speed. I would slow down my own input audio to 94-96% of the original speed (depending on the tape), so that Taris’ already slow recordings would play normally on normal walkmen and decks.
Big brain time: This worked-ish. At that time, from when I was doing this practice, my recordings were really good. Imperfect to a large degree, but acceptable (especially for the 45 euros I paid for Taris). Certainly better than the being-on-hold, mono, shitty, phone quality audio I had with Taper.
It was still frustrating though, because I had to change the speed differently depending on the tape, its length, age, etc., and it was different every time. I had it happen once to have to slow down the first side to 94.5% and the other one to about 96%. And what was the most offpissing thing, was that tapes would sometimes (if not often) play slightly faster near the end.
Shit Hit the Fan
Since last weekend (about 3 days prior to writing this article), I’ve been feeling very confident and excited to do things. It feels like the opposite of burnout; it feels like having a revving engine and not being able to sit still. It’s some sort of rebound after an actual period of not feeling like doing anything.
Yesterday, while being in this exact state, I decided to try to fix Taris because I happened to have spare belts.
I was feeling very optimistic about it and confidently opened him and immediately tried to test different belts in him. I noticed that the belt that the previous person had installed was correctly tight but thinner by around 1mm in width, so I thought of trying to fit a slightly tighter belt of the same width (4mm – I didn’t have other ones) to assist with torque.
Eventually, I decided to put the original belt in again, as the belts I had were too thin for the job too, as it seemed. And as I was trying to close the belts mechanism, feeling resistance but still trying to close it, it happened:
A whole serious-looking piece flew off.
This is how I felt when it happened:
Yeah yeah, I know that objectively I didn’t really break anything, and I just need to reassemble the parts and that there are people who have had a worse situation. I DO in fact comprehend that this is FULLY fixable and that it’s not that much of a big deal.
When this happened though, my brain went to something that went deeper than how fixable the issue was: I made something imperfectly functional become completely dysfunctional with this attempt to tinker. I didn’t know where to put it back or how.
I tried to find the service manual for Taris (TEAC V-33) and no matter where I’d go, in deep corners of the internet, I would have zero luck. A couple of people online, and specifically in America, would sell physical copies of the manual for like 19$ without shipping included – which means that for me to ever get one, I’d have to pay about 50 euros and wait at LEAST a month or longer for it to arrive. The closest to a free service manual was only a 2-page schematics scan of the circuit.
The secret third option was to go to the HiFi Engine website, where it seemed like people had the manual, except it was gatekept behind digital walls. When I tried to get through these walls, I was shown this message that said that nobody can make a new account:
I did a bit of research to see what’s up with this, and apparently this digital library with manuals and other stuff for old tech has been locked down for multiple years now. Not only that, but when existing members share content from this library, they get their accounts and their IPs banned. This had been done supposedly to protect the website from bots and attackers using many IPs to do bad shit there.
A few of the forums I visited that were discussing this issue had also made claims that the website has a single admin who is completely unreachable and extremely controlling over who is on that platform and what is shared. It has also been heard that the admin has some personal issues and a tendency to ban people for no reason. I cannot confirm any of this information myself, nor will I pick a side or call anyone names on this matter.
After all, I am here to express my personal experience here, and my problem in this specific area is this, that is much simpler than digital community problems with flaky admins or whatever:
The HiFi Engine was the only place on the internet where the manual for the TEAC V-33 existed. I cannot solve my little stupid problem that disables my tape recording setup entirely without that manual. It’s also possible that there are other people who have the same issue, just because this site is locked up.
I spent all my free time after work yesterday trying to find help anywhere. I sent emails, asked the Reddit gods for help and kept trying to find with logic where that piece would fit, and achieved nothing so far.
Please help :(
If you happen to know or have anything that could help me with this stupid issue, PLEASE reach out to me. I used more money than I had in my budget for joy purchases for tape decks already, and I really don’t wish to buy another one or hire a technician for this right now.
Taris means a lot to me, and any advice would be extremely valuable to me who is a complete noob when it comes to fixing things.
Wanting to listen to music on tape on half-dead tech that constantly needs repairing is not for the faint-hearted, and I am sure of this, but I really want to keep going and not stop trying and enjoying listening to my music inside cassettes that I can touch and make cool J cards for, all because of a technical issue.
And I’ll say this again for clarity reasons, please read it: This article is written as a vent, documentation of a stupid issue, confession of overestimation of repairing abilities, and as a call for help. I am not here to criticise anyone on the HiFi engine or the people selling service manuals online.
I just want to make tapes again :(
If you’re interested in helping me, please visit my Contact Page and send me an email there 👍
Cheers,
Mark
Unexpected update
I sincerely didn’t even fucking expect to make this update a few minutes right after I posted this article, but apparently, A LEGENDARY REDDITOR GAVE ME THE MANUAL.
Please do not send me more copies of the manual. I have gotten it already.
The story of Taris is going to continue, so stay tuned!
UPDATE: The story INDEED CONTINUES! Check out the next part HERE!