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A tale of two heads

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sfbp

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I’ve put off this day as long as possible. Firstly because I am in some sense ashamed of my stupidity; secondly because I kept hoping that I might be wrong. The last tests I did removed that option.

Anyway I am going to share with you an adventure I had on Ebay. Perhaps to laugh about it, maybe even cry, but also with a positive side – maybe someone will suggest where I might go from here.

For about 6 months now I have been looking for a blue NH700. Never mind that I managed to get 2 silver ones at quite reasonable costs last summer. I liked the blue one; after all blue is my favourite colour :rolleyes: The blue ones, I kept losing the auction. Until this listing finally showed up. I am not going to reproduce the link, but those of you who watch every MD listing like hawks will probably have seen it – and things like it – before.

So what did it say? “Returned to us by customer, maybe fixable”. Vendor in Los Angeles, USA. I thought, what the heck, maybe they just didn’t know how to use it. Well, I was right about that – in spades. I duly forked over $30 plus $20 shipping, and the parcel arrived. Now begins the fun.

I took it out of the box, and find that most of the accessories, and the instructions, are absolutely untouched. For example the twist ties on the cables were intact. Externally the unit looked absolutely pristine.

So now I take an already recorded HiSP disk 1GB – insert. Seems a bit sticky, push play, hear churning of mechanism but no music. Remove disk.

I look inside, and to my surprise (I didn’t look before) there is something in the path of the disk insertion!!! Remove case top and bottom per service manual. WOW! the overwrite head is all bent out of shape and pointing at right angles to where it should be. With some trepidation, I straighten it out, though by comparison with the other NH700 it looks like maybe the actual part that does the writing is not even there.

Gingerly reassemble. Amazing, the machine now plays back disks, no problem. Maybe the best sounding machine I have had in my hand to date. So the guy was right, sort of.

Clearly the write head is dead. Interesting symptoms: MD mode, it says it performs whatever you asked it (record) and then wipes the disk blank. HiMD mode, churns for about 10 minutes and finally says REC ERR.

Here’s my question: is it worth cannibalising another (working) player for that overwrite head? (and if so, must it be a HiMD machine???) The playback is perfect, whilst a new double head assembly is $128 US without shipping (ouch). Or maybe someone knows how to repair/replace just the upper head part?

Note there was another identical one listed on Ebay, and possibly a third, with the selfsame wording, from the same vendor. Here’s the silliest bit of all…. the machine was made for, and came from, the Australian market (judging from the mains charger). What was it doing in LA?

There’s only one way I can think of to make multiple brand new machines get into this state, and that is inserting the disk the wrong way. My mind boggles with images of perhaps a language class, and the teacher tells everyone to insert the disk, and all at once they do…… keeerunch…………

Crazily yours

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