New tape playing too fast. What do I do to slow it to normal speed?

I would start by going on line and replacing all the tiny "O" ring drive belts, very cheap to buy.

"What you describe is typical of a slow speed tape being played back in a deck that doesn't recognize a slow speed."

Hello,

It is possible the tape loaded on the wrong side of the drive. If you romove the tape, look for slack and tighten up, try it again or another tape. Otherwise it is likely that a spring for the pressure roller is off or broken. This is not easially repairable.

Hi, the casette deck has a mechanical system (servo-driver) most of the problems that happen when in your case, plays song so fast is that you look at the pinch roller. The pinch roller is a rubberized free spinning wheel typically used to press magnetic tape against a capstan shaft in order to create friction necessary to drive the tape along the magnetic heads with a normal tape speed if the pinch roller brakes, get lost from his place or got dirty then you get this fast sounds play, check the pinch roller if still good in his place or clean his rubber with alcohol, then the problem should be fixed.

the tascam 414 is a 4 track recording studio which uses standard cassette tapes- meaning they only play in one direction, because the tape is full. The 414 records at double speed so that recording fidelity is increased. When you have made a recording you want to mix you then dub your recording though the outputs into another standard tape recorder or whatever you have available, be it a cd recorder or your PC. So, when you listened to your recording on a standard tape player, you were not only hearing it at half speed but you were only listening to 2 of the 4 tracks. The other tracks would only be heard if you flipped the tape over, and they would be heard running backward. I would have though the 414 had a swich to allow it to also record at standard speed to but I guest it does not.

Though I don't know the details of your camera and the tape you are playing, one explanation could be that the tape was recorded in "extended play" EP rather than "standard play" SP. Some VCRs and some cameras are incapable of playing back in EP, a mode where the tape moves at half speed so you can record more on the same tape. The result is that the tape playing back at regular speed appears twice as fast and fast forward will be even faster.

Unfortunately, unless your machine can be manually set to play back in EP (usually it is automatic) the solution is to play it back in a machine that can handle EP.

If you are recording the tapes in a slow speed, then I would suspect that the tracking pulse is not being recorded properly. Since this is a new VCR, return it for an exchange. One of the recording heads is bad.
Dan

The tapes may have been recorded at 1/2 speed or 1/4 speed so they are not playable on this model.

Sometimes this is due to the tape not being pinched between the capstan and the rubber roller.

Make sure there is no slack in the tape when you put it in the deck. See if you can observe the tape going down over the capstan on the correct side.

If this isn't the problem, then the mechanism that engages the capstan roller may not to be working. In most cases, the rubber roller is mounted on the same mechanism that moves the record-play head against the tape. If this mechanism isn't moving, that would cause the problems you describe.

VCR's automatically detect what speed the present tape was recorded at. It only gives you a choice of speeds when doing the recording. If you are saying that it won't playback a tape recorded in one of the slow speeds, it is most likely because VCR's with more than two heads use different combinations of them in different speeds and the ones used for slow speeds are maybe needing cleaning. If this is the case, the vcr will seem to be playing OK, but the video playback will be bad.