I went to record a tape from itunes onto my 5500 system.  It's worked fine in the past but found tonight when I popped back after only an hour (on a 120 minute tape) it had finished the tape and stopped already which made me initially think it maybe just never started recording in the first place...

Anyway, I did it again so I could hear if it maybe auto-reversed too early and, lo and behold, it did and I heard the click after just less than 33 minutes.  I thought it might be a tune with a long silence but when I relistened to the tape (I'd recorded it with the volume down so I could practice some piano), it had happened about 10 seconds from the end of Foot Tapper by the shadows.

I'm thinking then that the problem must either be the tape or the auro-reverse mechanism.  I don't have any other tapes to test with and so I was wondering if anyone knows how the machine does it?  I have a horrible presumption that it's a torque thing, that it means a belt is slipping, and that it's going to cost me a fair amount of money (if I take it to a dealer) or time (if I strip down the set myself).  Has anybody had this problem themselves?

For now, I'm going to try getting it done from the previous silence in the track order and hope it works for now...

Belts are available but I would try another tape before anything else.

Martin

I went and recorded another playlist onto a spare tape I found in a drawer and it seems to have worked fine.  It's all very curious...  I was thinking about how the BeoCord normally flips the tapes really quickly and how it can only do that by telling the end of the magnetic part and the start of the plastic bit.  This means that it can't be a torque thing and must be done by either magnetic fields or light.  If anyone does know the way it's done and what might go wrong, I'm all ears

Well, my initial thought was about the 120 minute cassette tape. C-120 tapes are widely known to cause trouble in even the best decks simply because the tape is incredibly thin and I wouldn't expect any machine to accept them, some cassettedeck producers even advice against their use.

I am not sure how the Beocord 5500 tells when to flip over but if the tape stops I suppose it would do so. I will have to check next time I have a Beocord 5500 on the bench.

Martin

I don't think it detects silence, more likely the lack of the magnetic coating on the tape. It is definately not the tension of the tape.
Colud it be that due to the age of your cassette, some of the magnetic coating has deteriorated?

Andy T.

Well the same tape started messing about last night and auto-reversing when it was played at the same point.  I've now given it to a friend who's player doesn't auto-reverse as it's a perfectly good album otherwise.  I'll be re-recording my stuff onto a bunch of 90 minuters some point next week.