When I made the step up from a basement, hobby studio to a professional, full-time studio I bought a MCI JH-16 2" 16-track (beast of a) tape deck. The thing was so big that we had to pull off doors and cut away the door frames to get it into the building. After that, getting it up and running was even more of a challenge. Pulling cards, burnishing relays, applying Caig PreservIT on everything, buying a $500 MRL, replacing dozens of bulbs, buying a 'heavy-duty" de-magnetizer and searching for extra parts were all tasks I hadn't counted on. I hired a technician (the ever-patient Mike Everheart) to align the heads, adjust the transport and brakes, calibrate the electronics and more. Initially I was baffled and overwhelmed by the thing — hell, I even considered buying ADATs at one point! I didn't even learn to do simple calibration for several years, leaving the deck set for Quantegy 456 permanently! Over time I learned more and more about this machine and how to keep it running — especially because when it stopped working I stopped making money. Now I have moved on to other tape decks, which I am fearless about opening up and working on, and Mike hardly ever gets calls from me anymore since I've been performing my own repairs (except on DAT machines, no way...).
