glenjoy

Yes you were right that the recording magnetic head is the problem, open the case and see if it touches close enogh to the MD Disc, another the wire tape might alerady be broken, sometimes the symptom for a broken tape (butnot cut yet) is that it can record up to 1 to 4 tracks then cannot record at the remaining because at the outer tracks the tapes were already straight and the wire tape is already not in contact with each other, my MD has this problem also, what I did was replace the wire tape with a soft wire cables with small diameters, you can also use shielded magnetic wire which can be salvaged from transformers.