Regis's Echoplex Cleaning Page

First, remove the tape cartridge.

Clean: The pinch roller, pinch roller capstan, both heads, the tape guides for the heads, and the idler wheel. Basically anywhere the tape touches. (See the picture below.) Use Isopropyl alcohol for everything except the pinch roller, use rubber cleaner there. Also use Q-tips designed for cleaning tape heads, not the ones you stole from your girlfriends makeup table.

To clean the pinch roller, dip the Q-tip into the rubber cleaner liquid, hold it against the pinch roller, and spin it around while holding the Q-tip against it. If you see brown stuff keep cleaning until it goes away. Some black will come off too, that's normal. Use a dry Q-Tip on the pinch roller to finish.

To clean the pinch roller capstan you need three hands, so this is what I do: Wedge a small screwdriver in the hole by the pinch roller arm to hold it away from the capstan. (See the picture below.) Then power the Plex on, and hold a wet Q-tip against the capstan while it spins. Don't be afraid to press, and turn the Q-tip as you clean. Depending on how dirty it is, it might take a couple of Q-tips. Leave the screwdriver in place until both the pinch roller and capstan are dry, about 5 minutes.

To clean the heads, just wet the Q-tip and scrub hard. Most old Echoplexes have a lot of ingrained tape residue on the heads and your first cleaning will take some elbow grease. Just don't push so hard you push the head out of alignment.

Take a pair of scissors and snip the sides off a Q-tip to get between and around the tape guides attached to the heads.I also use unwaxed dental floss to get into the tight spots, and they make little brushes for cleaning teeth that work good too.

Clean the idler wheel like the pinch roller: Wet the Q-tip and hold it against the wheel as you spin it.

Change the Q-tips often, they are cheap and as they get dirty while cleaning use a fresh one.

Something else to do is go over it lightly with a vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment to pick up any loose tape residue.

When you are finished, lightly go over every thing with a dry Q-tip. Wait about 10 minutes for all the cleaning fluid to evaporate, and reinstall the cartridge.

See my Echoplex Survival Kit page for details on cleaning supplies, and links to buy them on the main Plex page.

It has occurred to me that a lot of you young whippersnappers that weren't around in the heyday of Hi Fi don't know diddly about analog recording hardware. Back then there were 8 tracks, cassettes, and the long time king, reel to reel. Being mechanical devices there was a lot of maintenance on these machines; They needed to be lubed, belts and pinch rollers wore out, heads needed to be cleaned and aligned and biased... Sounds like an Echoplex, doesn't it?

Sigh. Those were the days. You young punks don't know the fun you missed. We had real Hi Fidelity music and cool gear to play it on. All you have are those shitty earbud earphones playing compressed, low-fi digital music that has been mastered to plus 10db irregardless of the massive amounts of digital distortion added when that occurs.

Ok, enough old geezer reminiscing. My point about all this is that an Echoplex is just a variation of a reel to reel tape recorder, and a lot of Plex owners just don't know how to clean the damn thing. I've had numerous emails asking how. So, here you go.