Tate II - recommendations when acquiring working unrestored one?

[ArmyOfQuad]

After many years of being the owner of a broken Tate due to the burn out of unobtanium chips, which has been lost to repair purgatory forever, I am once again the owner of a working Tate.

I awoke Monday morning with an email alert in my inbox from eBay that there was a new match to my saved search for fosgate tate. I wonder how many others here have that same search saved and awoke to a similar email.

It's a silver face model, listed as for parts or repair, but then further described as coming from an estate sale, tested as powering on, but being unable to do further testing due to not knowing anything about it.

Basically - a game of chance on the eBay casino. Which I usually come out the loser. But....sometimes I just can't help myself.

Threw a $400 offer at it, figuring that would be a bargain if it turns out to work.

Well - it just arrived, and after fighting with the mess of wires behind my receiver for a bit, I've confirmed it is indeed decoding SQ.

The levels are a bit funky when adjusting the output balance knob, so it will need some cleaning.

But - given the risk of the burn out of irreplaceable chips, I'm wondering what the current recommended practice is for restoring one of these to have the best chance of preventing a chip burn out issue. My thought is perhaps recapping the power supply portion, and leaving the audio path alone for now. Although I'll need to dig up a schematic or service manual for the unit - does anyone have digitized documents of this?

 

[par4ken]

Four hundred dollars is a great price! The unit that I have has finicky pots as well. I sprayed them with contact cleaner and they are better now but not perfect. I need to get some more DeOxit to try on them. The ultimate solution would be replacement.

The Tate II has film capacitors in the signal path. You could replace the power supply and the other electrolytic capacitors but they are hard to remove as the leads are bent over on the bottom of the board so care has to be taken. Personally I would leave them alone, unless they look swollen or discolored. The ones in mine look factory fresh!

Thanks to furui_suterioo for finding the schematic.

 

[Q-Eight]

I've had mine for at least ten years now. Mine is also a silver face. It works as best it can (I guess) but it still doesn't sell me on SQ. The manual suggests leaving it plugged in which blows my mind since it's solid state. The manual even says allow for "warm-up" time.... that's why it comes with no power switch. Leave it plugged in all the time. That makes no sense to me. I will probably devalue mine if I turn the front remote port into a power switch but.... what's the lesser of two evils? Leave it plugged in all the time and have a rogue power surge wipe it out?

I also don't like that it doesn't have a 4-channel pass through; I don't like the fact it has no phono pre-amp....

What was the question again?

Oh yeah. My take on the subject is just to use them for their intended purpose. If it releases the mysterious blue smoke.... there probably wasn't anything anybody could have done about it. It's kind of been rendered obsolete anyway what with better Script decoding or that Surround Master from down under.

 

[sjcorne]

The Surround Master won't give you as much seperation as the old Tate units do.

 

[par4ken]

Remember that Jim Fosgate was a hifi nut or "audiophile", I agree with him that equipment sounds better after it has had a chance to warm up. That is especially true of tube type equipment, not as much with solid state. However I think that his real motivation was simply to keep cost down and so used "warm up time" as an excuse for not including a power switch. Why did he use TL084 op amps instead of the lower noise TL074, to save a few pennies?

I do agree that it is a pain not having a power switch but most people would be running thier decoder with a preamp or receiver most of which include a switched accessory outlet on the back so the lack of a power switch would be no big deal. The S&IC has a power switch but in my setup I rarely turn it off. It might be better for equipment reliability to remain powered all the time, in this green age even "phantom power" is frowned upon. Simply use a power bar with an on/off switch to kill everything.

 

[jaybird100]

The Surround Master won't give you as much seperation as the old Tate units do.

I get excellent separation from SQ with the Surround Master. I had an Audionics S&IC, which was also a Tate decoder, and the SM is at least its equal when playing SQ records.

 

[barfle]

I have a Tate // with a dead right front channel that is waiting for me to take the cover off, probably replace a 4066 switch (which I have abailable - wonderful little circuit) and offer for sale here. Still a ton of other projects ahead of it, though. And if I can’t fix it, maybe it’ll be “for parts” as well. I have the schematic shown above, but as noted, I haven’t even taken the cover off, so I can’t verify that it matches the unit on my “one of these days” shelf.

I have absolutely no problem with leaving solid state electronics powered up 24/7.