Roland space echo repairs / rehab ?

[okgb]

Anyone know a person or company repairing space echo's ?  Canada or N.A.  specifically the RE-301 Chorus Echo
a friend has one [ he may have de-maged it to death ] , motor turns tape moves everything works except
the echo, just varying levels of hum from the mode switch settings [ mode 3 works but is weak ]
Tia

 

[emrr]

The mode switch will definitely get dirty and fail.  I spent awhile cleaning one to get everything back. 

 

[mjrippe]

a friend has one [ he may have de-maged it to death ]

Why do you suggest that?  Did they de-mag with the 301 turned on?

 

[Whoops]

Try an Audio Probe on the Play heads output

 

[okgb]

Demaging , was the last thing he did with it and put it away , not sure at what point he realized it had issues
I wasn't going to open the can of worms,  but if cleaning  fixes it [ most of the pots are dirty ] I'll open it up.

 

[emrr]

Demaging , was the last thing he did with it and put it away , not sure at what point he realized it had issues  I wasn't going to open the can of worms,  but if cleaning  fixes it [ most of the pots are dirty ] I'll open it up.

One of mine worked perfectly and then I let it sit a couple of years.  Dirty open frame switch-itus. 

 

[Bo Deadly]

My RE-101 seems a little tired as well. Consider the following measurements of a 1kHz tone, noise floor and white noise:

The 1Khz tone and noise floor plots are ok. This is with new tape but the motor has a bit of warble to it (which I kinda like actually) so I guess the IMD side band junk is to be expected. Aside from some 60 Hz and some strange other peaks (182Hz, 243Hz and 300hHz), the noise floor is not bad for tape (or my heads are shot).

But the white noise test is awful. It's about 9dB down at 100Hz compared to @1kHz. And at 10kHz it's 36dB down!

I'm not actually positive the level of the peak in the first plot. I took these measurements a while back and don't recall the exact settings. Oops! The result was so bad I didn't bother to calibrate. It's ~-10dBu which is what I adjusted the plot to. I know these things are normally done at more like -20dBu but a higher level is a little more realistic for a space echo. And I'm not sure which head this is. I think it's the first with the speed in the middle pos.

So is this type of frequency loss characteristic of bad heads or a bad switch? Or is this typical of an old space echo in general. The heads look like they're maybe ~80% there.

 

[mjrippe]

The warble could be motor or pinch roller.  New rollers and motor rebuild kits are available if it gets to be too much.  The other peaks are all harmonics of 60 (180, 240, 300) so perhaps a PSU recap is due.

 

[Bo Deadly]

I recapped the supply. I don't recall if I recapped the main board but if I put a blank plug in the foot switch jack to turn off tape and get dry-only, there's very little frequency loss. So if the frequency loss is caps, they would only have to be in the recovery amp. I suppose I could check that with a scope. Do you get a lot of bass from yours? If you insert a blank plug in the PA jack for wet-only, is 100Hz as loud as 1kHz?