HISTORY:
Oh my! Today, while working through yet more reel to reel related spare parts, I have found some of our old R2R tape machine spare parts. Most of the parts are 'mundane' i.e not exciting items such as head assemblies, VU meters or the motors (they all found new machines to live in yonks ago) but some of these less interesting components that I will be listing could be of benefit to others who have the specific machines 'lying around' waiting for a spare part (or two or three ...)
I am very much "into" sustainability and a complete tape machine represents a LOT of embedded energy and to waste that embedded energy is a very bad thing, even worse is to bury it in landfill and subsequently poison our environment!
What is embedded energy?
Embedded energy is a measurement of the total energy that was used to create a component, a module or a complete piece of equipment originally.
HERE is some more information about Ee
So my motivation is 'saving things' where they may be old but still useful or possibly be repurposed.
Back to this component I am offering ...
Go back in time, in the 1990's our Australian Broadcasting Corporation was 'forced' by Federal Government funding decisions to 'clear out the cupboards' of their old, obsolete equipment.
Masses of fantastic high quality equipment used in the broadcast industry suddenly became available in the Australian market place through auction houses such as Pickles.
Masses and masses of gear of all types and what's even better, there was often a friendly ABC engineer on hand who could answer techie questions about the gear being offered. Not only that, much of the equipment had original full Service manuals - to me this was like 'techie heaven!"
Although it was hard to constrain ourselves, the bidding was stupidly low and many took advantage of getting great gear for "a song"
I am not a trader in such things but I ran an audio post production facility for many years and we worked with client's source material using 1/4", 1" and 2" tape formats so just imagine my glee when I saw this array of OTARI's and STUDER's being offered (by the truckload and with all the trimmings such as the aluminium reels and original Studer NAB hubs - Wow!)
I bought a LOT of those machines in all the different tape formats and produced my 'dream machines' by taking parts that needed servicing from other machines - ending up with some "perfect" OTARI's and more importantly STUDER 810 & 820's!
In my opinion, the STUDER is a superior machine but the OTARI is good too, and it was originally cheaper to purchase.
Any excess STUDER gear went overseas back to Germany (they were scrambling for the spare parts) and also the OTARI 'leftovers' went the same way but locally HOWEVER today I have found a few more bits and pieces from the OTARI MX5050 BII specifically.
Please don't ask if I have a complete, working machine - I don't because all the "good stuff" left home quite some time ago - now there are just a few parts that I am hoping someone can make use of ...
If this component from the MX5050 BII/III machine isn't what you are looking for ... try searching HERE to see the other components that may still be available
Here are the details of this spare part from an OTARI BII (competed against the STUDER B67)
OTARI (Japan) - Miniature Potentiometer with inbuilt switch and a Red LED sub-board)
SPARE PART ONLY
Extracted from the MX5050 BII
If you are working on this machine I expect you will have the full Service Manual (if not, I do see a number of sites offering these for no cast but make sure you get the correct suffix)
Part number: 3 64 T M 500 Ohm B (body of the pot)
Function: this pot sits between the lower section of the reels. Pull the knob forwards, switch operates and the Pitch Control is now active (Red LED indicates)
Potentiometer nor the switch are unsealed
Comes with the original mounting bracket and the small sub-board for the LED (9A561)
The special knob is NOT supplied ... it is available HERE though - I have separated the items as some may only want the knob and not the pot or vice versa.
DIMENSIONS:
Potentiometer & switch body is 26.2mm length x 16mm diameter
Pot shaft is round (not D spot) 5.9mm diameter x 19.65mm length
The metal bracket to which the pot is secured (removeable) is 32.45mm hole to hole
TESTING:
After all this time, this needed to be tested...
Potentiometer measures minimum of 1.1 Ohm and a maximum of 495 Ohm
Travel of the wiper was smooth both physically and electrically (no flat spots observed)
Switch has a nice 'feel' with a positive action ... pull out OR push in (it stays in each position fine)
Switch electrically is fine in both directions and on each pole.
Switch type is DPDT
I have now placed this pitch control potentiometer assembly into a sealed clear plastic packet while it waits for another MX5050 to live in
