[cmjones01]

I've just taken delivery of the alignment gauge mentioned above. It seems well made and, according to my micrometer, the back plate is exactly 2.40mm thick and the gauge pieces are exactly 3.80mm wide. That accords with my calculations of how big they ought to be, having measured the thickness of a selection of cassettes. They average 8.61mm thick (a TDK MA-R, quelle surprise, is both closest to the mean size and has the smallest variation around its circumference). Does anyone have a reference to what the thickness is supposed to be?

I've offered the gauge up to a few cassette decks. The Denon's head height is definitely wrong (too far from the back plate). That comes as no suprise to me. The Akai UC-M2 seems to be spot on. The Technics RS-B355, which is my "reference", also seems to be wrong - head too high - which is a bit worrying since 95% of my cassettes were recorded on it.

I tried the gauge on my old Realistic CTR-80A computer cassette recorder and it also shows the head being too high, but then I noticed something else: rather than using the rear bottom edge of the cassette as its datum, like all my "hi-fi" decks do, it uses two pins which sit in the two squarish holes at the bottom edge of the cassette, so this kind of gauge just won't work properly in it.

I'll try adjusting the Denon properly when I get a moment and see how well it works after that.

Chris