If you plug in your guitar and amp at this stage, there's a good chance the tape echo won't work perfectly right away. That's most likely going to be caused by the foam pressure pads applying either too much or too little pressure, but there are a lot of other factors that can go wrong. For this reason, it's best to connect and test each part of the signal flow individually

Guitar/Amp

Connect the guitar to channel 1 of the four track, turn on the four-track, and connect the headphone out to your guitar amp with an instrument cable (mono). Set the volume fader on channel one to about 7, and turn up the gain until the guitar starts to distort, then dial it back a notch. If you're not hearing anything, check the volume on the guitar is turned up, your cables are working, and your amp is turned on and working.

Record Head

Hit Record on the four-track. If the Record button is stuck, check that the tabs at the top of the cassette shell are intact, and cover them with electrical tape if they're not. Check that the tape loop is still moving smoothly. Strum the guitar for a few seconds, then hit Stop. Turn up the monitor volume on the four-track, press Play, and check that you can hear a few seconds of your strumming looping over and over on the tape. If you recorded to track one, make sure the volume for track one is up.

If you can't hear anything, press Stop and press Record again. This time, take a small flathead jeweler's screwdriver and gently push down on the foam rectangle across from the record head while strumming. Press Stop, press Play again, and while gently pushing on the foam, check if you can hear a few seconds of your strumming. If yes, it means you need a thicker foam rectangle. Experiment with different sizes and positions until you're able to record and playback onto the tape loop using just the four-track.

If, on the other hand, the sound is warbly, it means the foam pads are too thick, and the tape isn't moving along at a constant speed.

Play Head

Press Play on the Walkman. Again, you don't need to have a tape inserted; the Walkman just needs to have Play pushed down to work. You can press Pause on the Walkman to avoid hearing the transport squeaking along. Connect a pair of headphones to the Walkman and turn the volume about halfway up. Press Play on the four-track. You should hear the same few seconds of strumming you recorded earlier through the Walkman now. If not, experiment with the foam pad across from the extra play head you glued on. If the strumming you recorded earlier is on track one, try recording some on the other tracks and test again, since the two tape heads might not be aligned perfectly.

All Together

Connect a cable from the headphone output of the Walkman into channel 2 of the four-track. Make sure the Walkman is still on, and press Record on the four-track. While strumming, slowly turn up the volume on channel 2. You should start hearing the echo effect at this point. If not, try messing with the foam pads again while the tape is running. Try gently moving them a few millimeters over, or try gently moving the entire cassette a little, if there's any give. Experiment. You should be able to crank up the volume on channel 2 and get crazy, self-generating echoes, or dial it back for a more reasonable effect. Channel 2's volume is equivalent to the "Feedback" knob on a regular delay effect.



Once you have the pressure pads' thickness and position dialed in, carefully glue them down with a drop each of superglue.



Erase Head

If you're getting a build-up of sound with each pass of the tape loop, it means the erase head isn't working properly. The erase head is the one all the way to the left. Try putting in a smaller, thinner rectangle of foam in the cassette shell across from the erase head.