Bernard,

Just managed to get back onto the thread (lost it many times obviously).

Now, your Akai machines got noise reduction of some kind added just shortly after I bought mine, and I could have sworn it was Dolby of some kind . . . wasn't it? I remember being quite cross that they hadn't announced it until just before the event.

Whatever, if you think you could fix the "locked" transport, I'll get in touch.

One last thing on the subject of sound quality - the only time I made it into a professional recording studio the boss was giving us a grand tour and demonstrated his expensive new noise reduction which, to my ears, killed the cymbals and other high frequency sound stone dead. Shortly after saying the tapes sounded better with the NR switched off we were back outside. Some people can get SO defensive of their technology.

Gray D