[DMcMahon]

While doing soak testing noticed that it was quite easy to get slack tape with poor operating regime. Such as switching off when playing or RWD/FFD, also by changing speed while playing. A couple of times this slack tape resulted in the loose tape getting under the Take up spool and getting really jammed up. Maybe this was a scenario where the tape ended up being severed ?

There is no off control as such, on the speed control selector switch there is an intermediate off position for each of the 4 speeds, these 4 off positions remove power.

I would have thought you should be able to change tape speed while playing the tape without getting much slack tape, I must read the User manual to see what it says for tape speed changing.

I tried to compare to my Uher that I had used for comparing the copper spring piece but found that my Uher did not work in FWD/RWD, just got horrible rumbling noise like Ted had referenced in the Idler wheel recovery thread.

After a little investigation on the slack tape machine found that the Take up spool table rotated easily in both directions (in the idle state), whereas normally it only rotates in one direction with the spool brake stopping rotation in the opposite direction.

Also found the Supply spool table intermittently also was easily rotating in both directions.

So need to check out the manual brakes on both tables.