Topic: R500 Acting Ill

[dgale]

I realized this afternoon that I accidentally left my R500 on for about a week with a tape in it while I was out of town.  This deck has always been totally bullet-proof and has never acted up until now...now no matter what tape I play in it, it is riddled with dropouts and the "ERR" light goes crazy.  I obviously tried lots of different tapes, some of which were tapes I just transfered without problem a few weeks ago.  Obviously it's destined for a trip to Pro Digital but am just curious if anyone has any insight on why this would happen.

[dgale]

Unfortunately I tried that and it didn't help - it was even at Pro Digital for a full service and cleaning maybe a year ago or so (and maybe only 50 hours or so put on the heads since then).  What's odd to me it that it worked fine the last several times I used it both for mastering and for playback...it wasn't until I left it on with a tape in it for a week and then tried to use it that it work play a tape at all, relardless of the tape I put in it.  In th epast when I've had heads go out on me in decks, it's been a more gradual progression then that, so I thought someone might have some insight into the potential ills of leaving a deck on for an extended perdiod of time like this.  I thought perhaps the fact that a tape was in the deck resulted in the heads spinning for a week straight and wore them out or something like that, although I've never seen such a warning before.