Reviving a "Fully Serviced" Tascam 246: A Cautionary Tale of Vintage Audio Restoration

From eBay Disappointment to DIY Triumph: Breathing New Life into a Classic 4-Track Recorder

When I spotted a "fully serviced" Tascam 246 on eBay, I thought I'd struck gold – a classic 4-track recorder ready to bring warm analog sound to my studio. Instead, this purchase led me down a path of disappointment, determination, and DIY triumph. Join me on this audio adventure as I transform a supposedly serviced Tascam 246 from a non-functional relic into a working piece of recording history.

Note, this post is a translation of an unscripted video I recorded titled, Can I Fix This Broken Tascam 246 That Was Sold To Me As FULLY Serviced? which you can watch below:

The Unexpected eBay Adventure

I recently picked up a Tascam 246 on eBay. I paid more than the other Tascam 246 decks for sale because it was sold to me as fully serviced. The seller even gave me the shop name and everything. The shop's name is actually on the side, so I had no reason to believe it wasn't fully serviced.

However, I asked the buyer to double-box it, and he promised he would. When I received it, it was not double-boxed, and it did not work.

Initial Problems and Troubleshooting

What's going on is the tape head is stuck in this position. It wasn't like this when I first got it. I put a tape in it, thinking it was fully serviced as described, and I pressed play. The tape was from another four-track Tascam, I believe it was a 644. I thought the tape would work in there, but it immediately started eating the tape.

Fortunately, I was able to get the tape out without damaging anything. It had a few recordings, nothing really important, but yeah, that's what I got.

Dealing with the Seller and UPS

I told the guy, and he made a claim three months later. Actually, it's been about two months later. The claim, for some reason, wasn't paid. I don't understand why, but that's how UPS works, I guess.

The seller ended up refunding all my money, and then he asked me to send it back. Because of the cost of sending it back, I offered him an adjusted price for parts and repair. He decided to take me up on the offer, so I ended up with this thing after all.

Assessing the Damage

It doesn't work, and I'm not quite sure how to describe this, but obviously, it's stuck in this play position or record position. You can't put a tape in it. Everything else seems to move, and cosmetically it looks great. There are just a few minor scratches here and there, but it needs to be cleaned.

The VU lights and meters light up. When I first got this, I think I tested to see if the mixer portion worked, but there's quite a bit of noise coming out of the headphone jack. I'm not sure why that's happening. It might just be old electronics, maybe needing some new caps. I don't know.

Planning the Repair

But the guy said it was fully serviced, so I'm assuming if there were any bulging caps or anything that would lead to an extremely noisy audio path, then I would expect those caps to have been replaced. But who knows what type of service was actually done on this?

So, I'm going to check the obvious things. I'm going to take the back off of this and just reseat all the connections if there are any that I can identify that lead to and from the transport system.

It's been here in my house for two months waiting for this guy to tell me what he wants me to do with it. So, you know, what's another two or three months of sitting on someone else's shelf?

Hopefully, I can get it working today. If not, then I'll probably drop it off somewhere. So let me go ahead and open this thing up and take a look.

My Early Days with Electronics

As a kid, I used to work on electronics. My dad bought me those electronic kits from Radio Shack. Anyone who's into retro stuff would probably be familiar with them.

I really enjoyed that. I bought the Forrest Mims "Getting Started in Electronics" book.

This early exposure to electronics sparked my interest and gave me the confidence to tackle projects like this Tascam 246 repair.

Opening Up the Tascam 246

I mean, all I can do right now is just kind of reseat the connections. It looks pretty clean. I think this is the power supply. If I'm going to have a problem, I think it's going to be in this control board.

This piece right here looks like it should be on top of this because this is just kind of hanging there.We'll see. It's kind of a loose arm here. It's all folded up, so maybe that's where it's supposed to be.I'm going to look at some videos online and see if that's in fact the case, if I can get any pictures of a teardown or recording to see if that's where it's supposed to be.

Identifying the Issue

So my only guess is the person who quote-unquote "fully restored" this, or fully serviced it, didn't know what they were doing and obviously didn't even test if the thing worked after they got done working on it. That just blows my mind. Like, they don't even test their work? That's yeah...

So what's happened here is they put in, I guess, they changed the belts. That's probably what they meant by fully restored. I guess they changed the belts, they took out the transport, put this back on, didn't pay attention to that, and now to get this fixed, I'm going to have to take it out myself.

Attempting the Repair

Hopefully, I can do that with minimal disconnects. I'll probably have to disconnect this, but I've got to take that screw out. I'm not sure if y'all can see it. I've got to take that screw out down there and take these screws out. There's a screw underneath here and a screw underneath here, and that should allow me to lift this entire plate up.

Or lift this side, actually. I just need to take this screw out. I do need to take at least these two screws out. I think I can bend this up enough here to snap that on top, and then hopefully, that fixed the transport issue. For sure, this is a problem. This is not going to work with that like that.

Testing the Repaired Tascam 246

Well, I have this old TDK tape that came with another recorder I bought. I don't want to ruin this, but I don't want to ruin more of my tape, so I guess I'll give this a try. Look, rewind. It does rewind. Fantastic! Does it stop? Great. Fast forward. Here's the part I'm afraid of. Let's play. Oh, it does play! It stops. Hey, look at that!

Success and Final Thoughts

I think this is going to be my new favorite recorder. It sounds fantastic. It's so simple. Like, I have the 688, I have the 644, I have a Tascam 388, and I just love the analog VU meters. I love the simplicity of everything. The 688 and 644 are fantastic machines. They're pretty slick, but man, I may sell those two and just keep this and the 388. Let's record on these old vintage machines.

So that's it, folks. Hope you enjoyed the post. If you like this kind of content, please consider subscribing below. Have a great day! Bye-bye!