I'm the proud new poppa of an MCI JH110A 1" 8-track. My friend and I bought it from a television station engineer who has had it in his basement for a few years.

Where it was:
Cosmetically pretty clean
FF & RW work "fine"
PLAY feeds tape but the takeup reel doesn't pick it up. Just pukes it onto the floor.
Has no remote. Or, rather, came with a remote whose cable had been cut off flat at the remote and no cable or connector were included.
MRL tape included.

Things learned:
These things look pretty cool when you strip them down and really clean the shit out of them.
Cleaning every single pin of every single molex connector and Cinch Jones connector with alcohol, then Caig DeOxit, then Caig PreservIt makes shit work better. The takup reel now takes up tape.
I'm not going to find a remote on ebay.

Things I'd like to learn:
Where to find parts like the blinky-eye switches.
If there's a source for the Cinch Jones (I think that's the one, the same kind as the Power) connector so I can build my own remote cable.
General tips and advice for ownership. I've got a service manual on the way and am not really afraid of diving in and fixing shit that doesn't work.

Congrats on the machine! MCI's are cool!

except that I don't have anything valuable to say. Try Belvins audio, they're experts with MCI's, they might help.

Found the blinky switches and replaced all of the red opamp sockets with new good ones. Still don't have a service manual. Does anyone in Minneapolis or Chicago have one I could borrow for a week tops? I'd be happy to pay shipping both ways and even kick you a few bucks. I'd love to quit swearing at this thing and start making records on it.

D. Wayne Miller wrote:Found the blinky switches and replaced all of the red opamp sockets with new good ones. Still don't have a service manual. Does anyone in Minneapolis or Chicago have one I could borrow for a week tops? I'd be happy to pay shipping both ways and even kick you a few bucks. I'd love to quit swearing at this thing and start making records on it.

You'll find a manual eventually.

Also, you may well find a remote at some point. There were quite a few of those machines.

The molex connectx are the Achilles heel of those machines, so good on you for cleaning them up.

I loved the one I used to have. You can get most of what you need to fix it at Radio Shack.

Congratulations!
I strongly recommend buying/ copying a manual for your machine (correct version A, B, or C). This is something you can't really ditch like the manual for your DvD player. You can get the one for the 2-track 110A. The 8-track version might be hard to get.
Blevins Audio Exchange is one place to look for lots of MCI parts. Steve Smith is their MCi guy. I recommend ordering a manual pronto.

greg wrote:Steve Smith is their MCI guy.

It's actually Steve Sadler. Not that it matters much. If Steve isn't available (which is unlikely) at Blevins, you should ask for Matt Allen. Or you could contact Chris Mara and ask him. All of the above are Nashville guys, and they all know a shitload about MCI machines.

Good luck with a sweet machine.

I've worked with Chris Mara a few times. Didn't know he was an MCI guy too. I'll give him a call in the morning. In the meantime, I may have made my "problem" either better or worse. To supplement my almost-functioning JH-110A-8 I acquired tonight two new 2-track machines. They both have two "nametags" inside when you flip them up.

The first label on the first machine says JH-120 from, as best as I can read it, 1973, and the second label says JH-110T from 1976.

The first label on the second machine says JH-110T from 1975 and the second label says JH-140 from 1975.

What in the world is going on here? The first one has two channels of record/playback electronics mounted underneath and the second one has four channels mounted underneath but has two-track heads like the first. Both machines, of course, came without manuals. They were also free. Next week we're picking up a "working" JH-110A 2-track that these will be farmed for parts to feed. That one will also come without a manual, I imagine.

I now have four large, dead, washing machine looking implements hanging in the living room.

Thanks, danielruder, for the Chris Mara tip. I've now got a manual on the way for my JH-110A-8 and an answer to the weird naming of my two newest machines. The second label on each of them, JH-110T, is for their upgraded transports. So the audio cards for them are all different but the transport parts are interchangeable. Having two full spare transports can't be a bad thing, can it?

D. Wayne Miller wrote:Having two full spare transports can't be a bad thing, can it?

Absolutely not. Those are the parts, compared to the audio or control cards, that are expensive and hard to find. And that would be doubled since your transports are different.

Go to http://www.AnalogRules.com

There's a number of pages specifically on MCI tape recorders - with tips and info on repairing them and keeping them running, plus a ton of other info on Analog Recording.

Yes, it's my website, but there's more good info there on tape recording than anywhere else on the web that I've seen... and a section on MCI recorders that you WILL find helpful.

the direct link the the MCI pages is

http://www.AnalogRules.com/MCIindex.html

I just repaired a client's JH 110B 8 track 3 weeks ago, and repaired some JH 110 cards last week... there are still a lot of MCI's running in good condition.... even in Sweden where I sent a bunch of parts to a studio with a JH24 and a JH110B 8 track back in December!

regards,

Goreski