Fostex XR-7 Multitracker | Review & Tear Down

Here's a brief review and complete tear down of the fostex XR-7 which I recently refurbished for its owner. Its a nice cassette 4 track which suffers little ffrom Fostex's propensity for weird layouts and misbalance of features, and arguably the dolby NR sounds better than the DBX common to yamaha and Tascam contemporaries. I suppose there are things about it where i'd prefer a tascam 464 or 424 MK III, but those units porbably cost more at the time and still in the secodn hand unit. Nice unit overall.

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CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction
0:24 Size and weight
0:47 Tape speed
1:28 Dolby Noise reduction
1:34 Record modes & ping-pong recording
02:22 Send effects via the auxillary buss
02:55 Equalization
03:32 Output sockets and monitoring options
04:15 Digital tape controls
04:41 My thoughts on the XR-7
05:29 TEAR DOWN BEGINS - remove plastic knobs
06:26 A caveat regarding screw lengths
07:24 Opening the case
08:53 Acessing the cassette player
10:04 Use sharpies to make reassembly less confusing
11:28 A layman's guide to circuit ground
13:59 An overview of how the cassette player works
15:07 Motor model, operation and substitutes
16:01 Changing the belts & cleaning the pinch roller
18:22 Detaching the printed circuit boards from the plastic case
18:34 Power switch and input socket
19:59 Shuttle controls
21:34 Door mechanism
22:13 Output sockets & mixer
25:57 Trimpots for calibration