Analog weekend

OK, it seems that "24" is the answer to the question "How many consecutive daily vlogs can Lloyd make before flaking out?". I'll be back, but I need another break from talking into a camera today.

On Thursday I was on my way somewhere and I dropped into a local charity furniture shop because I'm always looking for a good solid desk to work at at home but instead, I saw this thing of beauty:

I was tempted and tweeted so. And several of my friends were less than helpful in dissuading me. So after my lunchtime meeting, I went back and paid for it. It was only £15 after all, and that's like, what? 6 STEEM? - yeah, no worries. The only trouble was that this was when it finally started snowing properly here and so I asked them to look after it until it was easier for me to carry it home.

And that was today! The sun came out and melted all the snow. And so I walked into town to pick up my new toy. It weighs about thirty pounds, so rather than treating myself to some weekend weight training, I got the bus home with it.

And I've been playing with it ever since.

It has a great little instruction booklet:

Which helped me work out how to get started. It came with one reel of tape and I had no idea if it had anything on it or not, so when I set it up and pressed play and nothing came out of the speakers, I didn't know whether that was just because it was a blank bit of tape or the magnetic tape had lost its magnetic alignment or if the machine just wasn't going to work.

So I removed the tape and took off the head cover to see what was going on there. There wasn't any obvious problem, but I couldn't really see the heads properly or what else was going on, so I took the face plate off and beheld the wondrous gubbins inside. I cleaned a few bits with a q-tip soaked in alcohol - the playback and erase heads and the switch that changes tracks.

And then I put it back together and loaded the tape again and bingo! The tape is full of sixties music, Sinatra, Tom Jones, Helen Shapiro, Acker Bilk are the ones that I immediately recognised. So it works!

It still needs some messing around with on the volume control and I want to have a proper look to see whether the belt for rewind has just fallen off or, more likely (it seems from reading various forums) rotted away to goo. It could do with a proper clean too, so I shall be spending some time tomorrow with IPA in a well-ventilated room.

And I also found my precision screwdriver kit, so I might have a look in my old Pentax ME Super SLR too before I get back to digital media making...

I was quite sure that the rewind and fast-forward functions don't work - probably a belt gone ping somewhere.