servicing the re-201 space echo

I have an old Roland RE-201 Space Echo unit purchased some years ago from a specialist trader in vintage music gear. He typically scours the Malaysian rural countryside for his stock, as it is said most of the best vintage instruments can be found tucked away in an obscure kampung somewhere.

People are generally surprised that rare music gear can be found in this part of the world. Maybe a lot of it was imported during the Kugiran Pop Yeh-Yeh era, and is now part of granddad’s curiosities collecting dust in the store. One collector who used to trade Space Echo units over the Internet said he even found some being used for karaoke.

Whatever the history of my Space Echo, it was due for some maintenance. Although generally fine considering its age, tape units tend to lose high-end clarity after time.

Their components need cleaning, tape heads need to be demagnetized and tapes need to be replaced. I had not done this since owning my unit so it was about time. After rounding up all the things I needed, I finally got around to the job.

Isopropyl, demagnetizer and replacement tape

First the old tape was removed so the guts of the tape mechanism could be cleaned.

Old tape removed

It’s next to impossible to find tape head cleaning fluid these days. After some asking I discovered isopropyl alcohol, a multipurpose solvent that can clean tape heads and much more. Unfortunately it only comes in rather massive bottles.

Quite a lot of isopropyl alcohol

Using cotton buds dipped in the solvent I carefully went over all parts that came in contact with the tape.

Posed photo #1: Cleaning with cotton bud dipped in isopropyl alcohol

If there’s one thing I learnt from my time at SAE, it’s not good practice to clean rubber parts with alcohol, so for that I just used water.

Posed photo #2: Cleaning rubber bits with cloth & water

Once nice and clean, it was time to invoke the mysteries of demagnetizing. I’m not too clued in on the technicalities of why tape heads require demagnetizing. From what I’ve read on forums, it’s just something that needs to be done to restore their fidelity.

I picked up my demagnetizer over EBay.  There were quite a few options available, I went with one that fitted my budget and was available in 240V AC.

Demagnetizer in packaging

Opening the package revealed a thoughtful message from the manufacturer.

GOOD LUCK!

GOOD LUCK??? Is there something about demagnetizing that required a special amount of luck? Not exactly comforting. With that in mind, I took extra care to observe the intricacies of the demagnetizing ritual gathered from various sources.

Demagnetizing step-by-step

This involves turning on the demagnetizer some distance away from the heads, moving in slowly, sweeping the demagnetizer close to the head for about a second, repeating for each head, and then smoothly and slowly moving the demagnetizer away from the heads until a distance of 3 meters before turning off the demagnetizer. Any sudden movements and I risked rendering the head inoperable.

Posed photo #3: Demagnetizing the heads

With that out of the way, all that was left was to insert some new tape, which I also obtained from EBay.

New tape

The instructions recommend letting the new tape run for about 5 minutes at slowest speed to smooth out any kinks.

Space Echo getting acquainted with new tape

For all that trouble, does my Space Echo sound any better? Well, it does, but not as much as I imagined. I guess there are other things to be considered. For one, the unit is still slightly noisy. Not that I thought servicing the tape heads would magically kill noise.

Maybe I’m too accustomed to noiseless digital effects units, but there’s no way I could record with the Space Echo and not resort to some noise suppression plug-in.

Anyway, I’m glad to survive my first demagnetizing experience unscathed. If anyone has comments, questions or tips, do post below.