Melos Echo Chamber, EM120 from 1979

Looks, although pinch wheel is not soft or hard, the surface has gone micro-crazed. As much bigger than C90 type cassette player pinch wheels, will try a piece of silicone rubber tube stretched over the original. A sensible use for a selfie-stick, using the silicone grip removed from the handle. Motor is dated 1979 but perhaps a replacement and the m/c is earlier, the pcb looks typical late 1960s

Selfie handle was too thick, stretched-on some silicone sleeving using farmer's castration pliers. Made little difference. I think the problem is the way the tape is taken off the inside of the reel of tape, at an angle and so if the tape is sticky with age , there is a lot of resistance there. Its a sort of continuous up-setting action. Coupled with supply side is small diameter and take up is on the outside so large diameter. So perhaps the tape winds on too tight if things have gone out of balance. Next time of powering I'll add some rubber sleeve over the spindle and try running the whole hank of tape through a few times. Is there a dry lubricant for such situations of sticky tape, graphite powder? talcum may be too abrasive on the heads?

Disabled the braking. Some rubber sleeving over the drive spindle and some graphite powder laid over the top of the tape reel. Run it like that for 20 minutes, removed the sleeving off the spindle and its been running fine since, even at the slowest motor speed. Except for a coupled of sections of ruckled tape running over the heads. Left the sleeving stretched over the original pinch wheel. The 2 dogs that keep the cart in place , spring action no longer strong enough to keep the cart in regular contact with the heads , so a couple of blocks of rubber each side and cable ties around offset that.

JIC any farmers out there, replace livestock for farmer. The tape now runs as easily as a C90. I doubt the owner will pay >30GBP for a refurbished cart. Presumably there was a label on the echo chamber casing originally , why there is a hinged back flap to this. As the spindle and pinchwheel and tape are always engaged, with or without power, the rear lid muist be so you can manually disengage the tape drive after each use. For anyone re-taping a cart, count off the turns of tape and its overall length. Assuming you would splice the tape off the cart, then for n+0.5 turns on the reel, you would have to put n turns in the tape , in the correct clockedness, before splicing.