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[audio cassette player] Are both or only one "axis" supposed to drive the tape? (piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/techsupport@lemmy.world
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I finally bought myself and old audio cassette player. The insides look crazy clean and the drive belts seem neither loose nor dried out.

But!

It's only the left "axis" - or whatever it's called - that's spinning and thus "driving/forwarding" the tape. With "left", I mean the one that rolls up the tape as it's being played. Looking inside, the right axis is not even actuated. It's just a "dead"/unmoving part. Is this how they all work?

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[–] 4 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

Yes. But you're holding it upside down. Normally the right one pulls the tape through the head. The logic goes that it reduces the number of components in the build, and if there is a problem you don't want the trailing spool continuing to push tape into the mechanism.

In an auto reverse deck the active one will stop and the idle one will start. That pulls the tape through in the opposite direction to read the second track. In a normal deck you'd flip the tape around because it only pulls in one direction.

Edited: I looked at the pic and saw that your tape goes in upside down.

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