pishta

While replacing the loader belt, I decided to tweak the head alignment to peak the levels. This has to be done if your tapes sound washed out or muddy and a tape head cleaner doesnt help. I generally peak at a high frequency portion of the tape like a cymbal or a held note. Tape must be running to do this so youll need to unplug and remove the Climate control unit and the top plate of the radio. youll need to plug the bezel back in so you have control of the volume to assist in this operation. Once you have your cover off and your tape rolling, youll notice when the tape head raises into the cassette, it exposes 2 phillips head screws that flank the playback head, front and rear. The FRONT screw adjusts the playback head in the forward program and the REAR adjusts the head in the "reverse" mode (im almost positive that is correct but you'll surely figure out which one does anything once your in there). The head itself rotates 180 degrees when you hit the program button and these screws are "stop screws" that limit the heads resting angle by the slightest margins. Get you tape rolling and crank your treble to max: turn the front screw very slightly, 1/8 turn will completely throw you out of where its supposed to be. Turn back and forth a few degrees until you get maximum treble output from tape. Make sure Dolby is OFF when doing this. when you get that peaked, hit program and peak the other screw on the reverse tape travel. I like to flip the tape after I do both sides and compare the same track position to both head directions. Youll be suprised how much you can get back doing this simple procedure on ANY old cassette deck that has manual adjustments. Some high end home decks have auto head alignment and 3 head units have a separate record head that can be aligned also but rarely need it as the factory presets these non moving heads to a high level of calibration. There are 2 potentiometers on the cassette deck PCB that are visible. these are the output pots of the 2 channels. Dont adjust these as they are factory set to provide the optimum output levels for the amps input. This probably is identical on the Nak decks as the tape transport is most likely very similar if not sourced from pioneer itself.