Your Playtapes sound lousy, right? Can they sound better? YES! Here's how.

by fnnutz@xtra.co.nz  Dave Agnew in New Zealand.

I'm no expert, just had my Playtapes a few months. However, I have over 700 8 tracks, and loads of players, so am no stranger to the problems of the good old continuous loop tape. Decided to look for a Playtape and some tapes, being a hard out old time audio fan. And, Playtapes never were sold here in New Zealand, so I started hunting for one. From the USA, naturally, were they sold in other countries? I never spotted them in New Zealand at the time, and I'm sure I would have had they been available.

Anyway, ended up with an MGM Playtape 2, Model 1401. This machine has a tone control. Some do not. In the box, mint, plus 18 tapes. The vendor said it worked fine, well, on arrival, NOT !!!

Firstly, upon slotting a tape in after buying 4 'D' cells, this cat was SICK. The Model 1401 is simple to take apart. Screws hold it together. The belt was stretched and sticky. A cotton bud and isopropyl alcohol cleaned that mess off the drive pulley and the larger flywheel, if you like. . A trip to the equivalent of Radio Shack got a belt, for a couple of bucks. Does not have to be an exact replica. I found one that did the job. I gently blew the 30+ years of dust and moths out with air, then sprayed the volume control pot, the channel change pot, and the tone control pot with that wonderful fix-it spray, CRC CO Contact Cleaner in the blue and white can. Well worth investing in a can, it seems to work wonders with things electrical. Cleans all the crud off, and harms nothing. Well, nothing electronic. Don't recommend you get a lung full. It kills flies !

Break off the cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol and clean the head/s, and the drive roller of tape gunk. I found that by poking a pen on to the activating switch for the drive roller, found on the extreme right looking down the tape slot, and holding an alcohol soaked cotton bud on to it does wonders. Do it several times, change cotton buds until no more dark stuff comes off the roller.
Do this often if you play your Playtape. I hope you do. Just like your 8 track player.
Next step, demagnetize the head/s. I bet there was never a demagnetizing tape for these made, as there were for 8 tracks. Or, what about a 2 track head cleaning tape? Anyone seen one....for what they are worth which is not a lot !! So, you will need a hand held type with a long enough rod to reach the head/s. A good hint is to wrap the tip of the demagnetizer with Sellotape, or whatever it may be called in different parts of the planet, to prevent the metal to metal contact, which does your heads no good at all. I'm guessing everyone reading this knows what to do with a demagnetizer. Whatever you do, demagnetize your heads down the back 40, or somewhere where none of your favorite magnetic tapes are stored. I have read horror stories of 'wiped' carts, from being stupid, or rather, not thinking. Do it away from your tapes !! Full stop. Now that the player was in OK working order, or was it, in went a tape. How did it sound? 

Terrible would be the word. Some tapes played, some did not. I looked hard, the foam was all crumbling, and that was topped with black felt, which fell off at a touch. I scraped the crappy old pad out with a screwdriver, replaced one pad with foam rubber, sticky backed and cut to approximate size, with a strip of Sellotape stuck on the top and trimmed to size, and slotted the tape in. Instant 100% improvement in sound. Did the other one, and hello.......both channels .
I have repaired most all of my tapes, they suffer the same ailment as a lot of 8 tracks, the dreaded 'crumbling pressure pad'.

Also I found that Playtapes are extremely dependent on the pad for best reproduction. The original pressure pads all seem to be the same, no matter what label the tape is. Low density black foam, topped with a strip of black felt. And, some of them squeaked when they were playing. Very annoying, as the motor and belt noise is not the quietest. I mean, we are talking super LO-FI here !! And mono !!

I had to open one, as the tape was jammed and crinkled up. Luckily, the label was 3/4 unstuck, I saw the screw, and in no time flat, the innards were revealed. Great, they ALL seem to open the same way. It's easy. A single tiny philips head screw holds ALL Playtapes together.
BUT, do you need to open them ?? Not really. You CAN clean the rubber roller of tape gunk with isopropyl alcohol and a cotton bud without taking the tape apart. Just gently pull the tape upwards with some non-metallic object, and you can get in there with a small cotton bud. Be careful not to get isopropyl alcohol on the tape. Not 100% sure of it's effect, so I don't get the stuff on tapes. The only ones you really need to consider opening up are jammed/crinkled/crunched ones, tapes where the tiny plastic pivot pin for the spring have broken and ones that SQUEAK when playing, I mean, a 'mechanical' squeak. I have had about 20% like this. These squeaky ones are cured with lubrication to the center pin that the spool sits on; mostly this is the cause, there is another mentioned later. I wouldn't bother too much opening the cart unless the sucker is squeaking as the spool is turning. The splices seem to all be in good shape, so I never touched them. However, if you have this squeaking problem, read on.

Remove this screw, then get a flat thin bladed knife and force it between the 2 halves of the cart .The head is in the DEAD center of the cart, you can feel where with your thumb. Pry it open from the bottom of the cart. If the part of the label that bends over the end of the cart can first be pried loose without wrecking it, then do it. If not, don't worry, leave the 2 halves hinged together, but lying flat, bottom to bottom. I tried soaking a label off one cart, using a sponge and warm water. It was not a great success. I did manage to dry the label out slowly, but it was a little thin in parts. I would rather just sacrifice complete originality to a tiny hole, and keep most of the label intact, but you only really HAVE to open the cart if it's making that annoying squeaking noise when playing, or of course, a broken spring pivot. Opening it will reveal all, make sure that a metal spacer that in some carts only, not all though ,and should be there IS there, you will know if it is missing in action, the tape spool will be loose on the center pin and sloppy. Or it may simply have gunk on the spool pivot pin, or it may need some lube, or both.

I had to iron a foot of this tiny tape as it was badly crinkled up, but even though there were a few visible marks still on the tape, it sounded just fine when I got to play it. If you have to iron out crinkled tape, low heat and between some A4 paper does it for me.

I then got my trusty can of CRC aerosol white lithium grease, which I use on 8 track spools too, and lubed the center pin. It doesn't melt, freeze or splatter around. Just sticks there. I do believe that Vaseline also works OK. You will find that generally, but not always, there is a metal sleeve over the plastic pin. You can take the whole plastic spool off the pin to lube it and clean the pin if needed, just don't get the tape twisted. 

Some are meant to have this small metal sleeve that fits on the plastic pivot pin and I have found it to be missing in 3 of my first 18 tapes They had definitely not been opened, some mongrel must have had a hard day at the Playtape factory and left them out. If the spool is 'slopping' about on the center pin, chances are the sleeve has been omitted during manufacture. They were making one hell of a noise when playing. Still looking for something I can use as a sleeve for those tapes !

Other tapes are different, the spool is a snug fit on the pivot pin and does not use this metal spacer.
If you go this far, you can take the whole roller/pawl spring mechanism out. This way, you can give the rubber roller a good cleaning with no fear of getting isopropyl on the tape. Be VERY careful removing/replacing the tiny V type spring on the plastic pin it sits on. I have 3 broken ones !! There is one pictured in the scan. They are NOT very sturdy. To replace the spring, first put the roller in the pivot mechanism and replace that on the plastic pin, Then, using the tweezers again, replace the spring, get the top in place first, then very carefully bend the bottom into place and make sure the wire sits in the tiny groove in the end of the pivot mechanism. Also, make sure that the spring in pushed as far down on the pin as it can be. Remember, the plastic molded pin that the spring goes on is FLIMSY !!

Put the cart back together, then with something non-metallic, remember, your tapes do not like metal and magnetic fields, gently pull the tape up away from one side of the all too familiar crumbling pressure pad. I scrape the old foam pad out as well as I can, use a small screwdriver, hobby knife, or something appropriate, clean it with some isopropyl and a cotton bud (aka Q-tip), scrape it again, dry it off with the other end of the cotton bud, replace the 2 pressure pads with new ones, I used a more closed cell sponge than the original, mainly as I can't find any open cell stuff here. Tried it out on one, it worked just fine. It's sold in a roll at the hardware store, as a draught excluder, 3/16" high, seems to be ideal height, and wider than I need, but it's the smallest I can find. Trim it to size, I stick a strip of clear Sellotape on top, and trim that to size using nail scissors then I use a pair of tweezers to hold it in place. Do it the same for the second pad, clean the rubber roller of tape gunk with alcohol/cotton bud, wind the tape flat, slot 'err in, and it makes all the difference. The pads are so small that I don't bother too much about strict measurements. I just cut a small piece off the roll, and trim it by 'eye'. 

Couldn't find any info on the web on 'how to repair' Playtapes, but that is how I did it. Sure does work OK. The white lithium stops the spool squeaking straight away, and the new pads will bring your old Playtape back to, well, ....something, is it life ??....perhaps.......but not as we know it, Jim !! In the hi-fi audio world anyway. But, they are a cool item from yesterday, and cute as a button and as such, deserve to be saved.

One more thing, I found that sometimes, but not always, the 2 channels seem to have been recorded differently. Get Channel 1 tuned in, switch to Channel 2 and it's more/less trebly. Some tapes are fine, you don't have to adjust the tone control ( if your machine indeed has one, some did not), and some you do. I experimented with different size pads, but not a scrap of difference. Works the same on both my machines, so it must be the actual recording. Strange ! Quality control was obviously in the, 'don't give a shit' league.

I now have a Playtape Model 1310 as well, I believe this was a cheaper, more common model than the 'de-luxe' Model 1401. I have not taken this one apart, as it runs just fine. However, it does not have the easy-open screws in the back as does the 1401. Need further investigation. The 1310 does not have a tone control, and has one pickup head, the MGM Playtape 2 Model 1401 has 2. Both have labels that say that the stereo position switch is to be used when stereo Playtapes are available, but that never happened. Being electronically challenged, I have no idea what purpose the 2 heads on the Model 1401 serve. Never been able to find a wiring diagram for any Playtape equipment.

Look hard at the top right scan of half a cart, you can see the metal sleeve on the center pin. The bottom 2 Playtapes show the size of my new pads, not quite filling the gaps, which I have found best, the Connie Francis one you can see the screw, it was making a 'squeaking' noise so had to be opened to find the reason, which was that it was full of dust, needed cleaning out and I lubed the center pivot as well; the Paul Revere and The Raiders tape hasn't been opened and so obviously, doesn't squeak.

The Playtape is a big hit with everyone who sees it, especially the youngsters, most of whom don't know too much about records ! Well, happy repairing, since the first draft of this, I have come by another bunch of Playtapes, that makes it 66 in all. Some are double-ups that I would like to trade only for other Playtapes. They will be repaired as required, new pads, pinch roller cleaned up, and if it squeaked when playing, I will have opened it and cleaned and lubed the inside, so the head of the securing screw may be showing. At least the tape will play !!

Feel free to e-mail me at fnnutz@xtra.co.nz 

Dave in New Zealand.

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@ 2001 8-track Heaven