Best Of

When I got this RT-71 several years ago, I replaced belts and bulbs and cleaned/lubed linkage. It recorded and played well and has sat around mostly unused. Now it has some scratchy pots and one channel cuts out recording in FWD, but it's fine recording in REV. It sports auto reverse playback and also recorded in reverse direction. No flipping tapes. It's a four head deck. Two erase and two heads that do both playback and record.

I have yet to find a complete service manual for the Pioneer RT-71 deck. I've asked at AK and Tapeheads forums. I even tried service manual pay sites. All I find is a few pages of PCB's and a schematic. No unit repair or calibration info.

I started looking at earlier Pioneer decks for a similar design. The Reel-Reel site has quite a database for decks, but they don't list all the early Pioneer decks. The first deck listed on the Pioneer page is the QT-6600 and the RT-71 is next. The blurb for the QT-6600 (Quad Track) said its based on the two channel T-6600. I was able to locate a service manual for the T-6600/6100. The tape head block and capstan/pinch roller are the same. Insides look the same. I'm thinking the electronics and calibration will be similar.



T-6600. Looks like it got a face job and became the RT-71.



RT-71



The pinch roller flips down out of the way and hides in the chassis for easy tape loading.



Press play and the pinch roller flips out and up against capstan.




Anyway, same old clean potentiometers and switches.



This deck has solenoid-controlled ALPS switches for switching between FWD and REV record and playback on bottom three PCB's. This one at far left side.



I had to remove one ground wire to flip the middle PCB around. That way I could better control applying DeOxit into switch without getting it everywhere. Lots of the old terminal post bare wire wrap in this deck.



Another short switch on the right side PCB.