The TEAC A-4010S, Redemption, & Minnie Pearl

A tale of two tape machines...

When I was a kid my dad gave me the TEAC reel-to-reel that he had bought while serving in Vietnam.  I had a lot of fun with that machine recording and chopping up tape early in my life with guitar.  I used to plug my Stratocaster directly into the preamp and lay down a backing track that I'd play along with.  Simpler times.  Those recordings are lost now but what's worse is that sometime in 2002 the recorder quit working...

Back in those days I was broke but ambitious so I took it apart to troubleshoot and before long the catastrophe was irreversible.  I'd ruined it.  I scalped the VU meters and the reel backer disks (they made cool coasters).  Yep.  The most of the rest went in the trash to hide my shame.  I still have the "coasters".

Fast forward 20+ years and an old-timer drops by my shop with an identical TEAC A-4010S along with a pile of tapes and some other odds and ends.  The tape machine was broken but he wanted to make a deal and sell me the whole pile cheap.  Since I butchered the last machine and always kind of regretted it I went ahead and bought the pile.  I set to work much more carefully than I had 20 years before!  It took a couple of days but I was able to repair and fully restore the machine!  It felt great doing that job having much more experience, patience, and wisdom after two decades of working on gear!

But the satisfaction of REDEMPTION didn't end there!  A few weeks after I had restored it the owner of a Chattanooga video production company reached out to me.  They had been given my contact information because they were looking for some old analog gear they could use in their work for the PBS documentary on Minnie Pearl.  So of course I loaned them the TEAC I had just restored.  At the time the documentary was headed to a limited theatrical release and unfortunately I didn't get to see it but they were totally grateful for the loaner.  This was just a couple years ago and I'm not sure why but for some reason I just remembered the doc and was able to find it on YouTube.  Sure enough there she is!

So, yeah.  I always felt bad about my failure to fix the original machine when I was in my early 20s and am thrilled that I was able to get another shot and make it right.  The fact that the machine is now a movie star is icing on the cake!