Sony TC-377 Reel to Reel Player
About
The TC-377 is a beautiful reel to reel player which was first released in 1972.
Machine history
I’ve always wanted a reel to reel player, and was extraordinarily lucky to find someone local selling 2 of them (this and a TC-366-4, more on that shortly) so I grabbed them immediately.
Service Manuals and User Guides
Original documentation is freely available on the web.
Faults and repairs
Note: This is not exhaustive, these are only the faults and fixes I’ve experienced.
Machine would only play for a few seconds and then slow to a halt
Once play was engaged the reels would start at normal speed and then after about 5 seconds would slow down to a halt.
To fix this I had to replace the run capacitor. You’ll need to double check which cap is suitable for you, but the one I went with ended up being a completely different package to the one installed (which makes sense, things have changed!).
As I wasn’t sure if this would be the fix I used clips to connect it temporarily rather than soldering it in. This has worked fine and its still installed this way.
After reassembly the machine would only play in reverse/rewind
After a cleaning session I found I could not physically rotate the playback switch in to any forward position, although rewind would engage fine.
During reassembly I had managed to misposition the rod that connects the play control to the mechanism. Carefully putting it back to its correct position resumed full functionality.
Standard maintenance
Belts
All belts are relatively easy to get to. With zero experience I was able to open the machine and swap out all belts in less than an hour.
Incidentally I don’t know if the belts in this machine had recently been changed, but I found the ones I removed had little give in them and probably would have been fine for quite a while.
Head cleaning
The heads are readily accessible by just pulling the front middle cover off, exposing the entire tape path. IPA on the metal parts and heads (not rubber parts) greatly improved playback accuracy.
I found it useful to use an endoscope to inspect the cleanliness of the heads. Although they visually looked shiny and clean the scope showed crud build up around the outer edges of the heads. Persistent but gentle cleaning soon got the heads looking spic and span.
ToDo
- Clean pots (again)
- Record a left/right test to tape
- Check recording is ok (a test recording on a ‘new’ tape was very wonky, but that could also have just been that tape)