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Home fixes for a R37 with a maladjusted record head?

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Shepherd

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I have a R37 that I bought from somebody over the Web years ago, and it's never worked. Some day I will track that man down and have my revenge.

But for now, I've had an R37 moldering in a drawer for years because I haven't wanted to pay to have it fixed. My understanding of the problem is that the record head got whacked out of ... uh ... whack at some point and needs to be re-aligned.

Has anybody had any experience with actually doing this at home?

What are the odds that I'd make the unit much, much worse if I try and fail?

- Matt

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Well it is unfortunate you got a non-working R37, but I would imagine its too late now to do anything about it in terms of the seller, lol.

These days a unit like that (though it does still have its good points like its LINE OUT feature), will probably go for around $50-$60 US on eBay I'm guessing (a working one I mean).

As for the fixing of it, yeah it can be done but you should know a little bit about what you're doing before you attempt it. If you're confident you do you should look around the mindisc.org site for DIY repair info that has been left by others over the years for a variety of units. Even if info isn't there for your particular unit you can take the theory from the info you get and put it to work. All MD recorders have the same theory of operation and employ an optical pickup (laser), a MO disc spinning at CLV, and a record or overwrite head (OWH)...

Can you still playback discs with the unit? Many times a unit with a non-functioning OWH can still playback discs but it can't record. If that is the case it may well be a problem with the OWH.

The OWH must be precisely aligned with the pickup in order to work correctly and it must touch the disc properly when engaged and be free of dirt/debris. (So you could start with a cleaning but I doubt that would be the problem since it doesn't seem to work at all).

If you're not using it for anything, you really can't make things worse (I mean if it is a paperweight now, having a dissassembled paperweight you end up throwing in the garbage isn't really a big deal.)

Sometimes you might find it easy to repair and be very happy with the results. Other times you'll just get frustrated, make things worse and possibly end up junking it.

Depending on if it can play or not, you could get a few bucks for it on eBay if you sell it as a broken and as-is unit; so you might want to try that route before you take the risk of potentially destroying it altogether.

If you still wanted to use MDs you could get a newer [used] unit or a similar (or the same model) older unit to replace it and just use that. If you have other MD gear already you needn't even do that.

All up to you really. But yes, it is possible to repair a unit, but it depends on what is wrong and if parts are in need of replacement or not.

Anyway good luck!

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