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Yup, they are centered. But once I pull out the jumper cables for testing, the mechanism motor starts to bind. Believe me, the arrows are perfectly in alignment. 😎

@@botelhdaI just lifted the table slightly and if you move the gear left and right you'll hear it start to bind - center it - set it down and eject. If it doesn't, adjust slighty, took me about 20 minutes and it works perfect now.

I’m having the exact problem

Did you find out?

It's normal. Its the capstan motor that is humming. You may want to add a drop of oil to the capstan motor shaft as it should quiet it down a bit. But that's likely the hum. :)

Ahh, it's actually not "off-tape" as in a 3 head deck. This is a 2 head deck, so no tape monitoring while recording. This deck has an annoying feature in when you engage the recording option, you don't hear the audio from the deck. (It has to do with the way their receiver is setup). You can enable "audio out" while recording by making a mod on the deck. I'll have to check with mine, but I believe the headphone out works for monitoring while recording to tape.

I'm in Brampton, Ontario Canada, but not accepting any shipped repairs at the moment. Thanks for inquiring.

Issue was resolved by tweaking the blue pot. Found out a week later that it was the torque control ont eh deck. The belt was a new pioneer electronics factory replacement belt...

I've never measured a roll, but with having all slots taken up for a 35mm frame on the tray (12 exp), it's a good hour or so. All depends on how many times oversampling is used as well as whether ICE is used or not. ICE takes a bit longer per neg scan.

You need to remember when these were made. There's no a deck in the world which wouldn't need maintenance after 30 - 40 years later. The reason we see so many repair videos and discussions about Nakamichi decks is due to these reasons: 1. They were ridiculously expensive when new. People with "normal" salary couldn't afford them. Now people actually can buy them even though they are still pretty expensive. 2. They are real high-tech equipments and not just regular hi-fi. Considered the best you could have get if you got money. Sure there were other high-tech brands too. 3. They are sought after and keep their price. So it's wise to repair them. For example with 200$ repair, even "low end" Nakamichi decks could cost at least 1000+ dollars easily in working condition. 4. You can't find new cassette decks as good as Nakamichi made new today. Not even if you are willing to pay a fortune. That's why Naks or other high-tech brands like Revox from the 70's and 80's are also needed in the studios. And yes, they still produce new music cassettes even today. 5. Regular hi-fi decks like consumer models of Philips, Technics, Akai, Teac, Tascam etc. are mostly just trashed/recycled if they broke, no reason to fix them usually. If you see Nakamichi written in somewhere, you know it has value even in broken condition as there's not hi-fi models of Nakamichi, only high-tech.

​@@showstopperrob1097 Studers are superb of course like Revox but "if" they broke, considered difficult to repair and as they are more rare than Naks, getting spare parts might not be that easy. Other than that many consider them best of the best.

Fortunately the FW chipset didn't get killed. The one in this laptop is low voltage... not like some of the older FW400 ports that are on some mac towers and PCs. There are times when you can fire up the laptop and the scanner is not visible. I don't think I'll be rebooting just to see if the scanner made connection with the laptop. This is probably my 6th coolscan unit. Never an issue with testing or scanning on this laptop.

@@botelhda so please add this information to your description for all coolscan newbies.

Yes. As this is an older scanner with a FireWire interface, you are best off with finding an older mac computer with a running copy of OSX snow leopard, leopard or tiger. Anything that is newer will not work, as there's no support for it. On the PC end, you'll be safe with Windows 7/32bit, but I have heard that people are running newer operating systems with a bit of tweaking.

Interesting! I would check the volume pot and turn it a bunch of times to see if the audio will "kick in". Most likely it will require a recap from the sounds of it. It could be a loose cable, but it's odd that you are getting moving VU meters though. Do the headphones work at all?

I think it is something else. Does the unit play tapes? It could be that you need a remote to turn off/on the display...(or something is wrong with the display somehow)

@@botelhda Yes, the unit plays both digital and analog tapes, the point is that I don't remember what is the function to turn off the display. I consulted Radio Shack and they replied: "Hello and thank you for contacting RadioShack. Unfortunately we do not have a manual available for this vintage DCC tape deck. Thank you. Ed". Thanks for the answer, I'll see how I solve it. Greetings from Argentina.

Sorry my friend, I do not believe there is a way to.turn off the display. Besides, it should turn itself on after powering off/on the unit. There is a display button on the remote control, but I think it is for track/time display. Good luck!

Everything you wrote is a total crap. You definitely never restored any deck. I spent with Revox longest time to keep it restored and it is still not 100% good to my standards.

I'm just using it with the nikonscan 4.0.3 software on snow leopard. Works great and I get full use of hardware ICE as well as NEF file creation

Unfortunately, good things take time. ;) You won't get a faster, cleaner and better result on any other desktop scanner, especially one that does both 35mm and medium format scans.

What do you use for transfer that is better?

@@bradvincet1848 Epson V850 scanner with Dust and scratch remover color correction also Its called Digital Ice software Then throw in the AKVIS Retoucher and you have perfect crystal clear scans. The machine you are showing is way out dated. Thanks Mike CTS

Nope...sold it off as parts. Was just too frustrated with the damn thing, and that is after replacing all the caps as well as the power supply. Most times when it acts like this, it's almost always the alignment of the tape drawer gears. Not in this case...

Unfortunately, no. :( I ended up selling it to a guy who bought it for parts. I did hear from him later on, and he had mentioned that it has some serious processor issues. I'm pretty happy it left the roost as I spent way too much time on it.

That was done from a negative. :) The scanner will scan negative C41 color/BW as well as positive negatives that you would see on slides such as Kodachrome. This is really the best scanner with hardware-based ICE that's out there at the moment, which is quite amazing for a device that is as old as it is.

Yes, I dug thru the manual...however it was not playing nice so I sent the deck off to a higher authority in the US. Turns out one of the microprocessors was shot....and was destined to be a parts unit. :(

Dan Hartman - I can dream about you. Great song!

Simply switch to a different sw. Try VueSan for $100 and it works with all the Mac OS. Am using in 2021 with Big Sur (11....)