do you need to tweak a tape deck???

If you want to tweek it further, get a meter and fine tune the bias for each type and brand of tape you use.

Sugar, in this case I let my ears decide since this deck reproduces whatever recorded at once. Meaning I've already defined for each type and brand(I use) which bias point I need to choose.

My God, I've owned my Nak CR-7 for 12 yrs and all this time it has sat on its stock feet, no tweaks, on the MDF shelf of my Salamander rack. The tapes I make for my car or even--I am loath to confess--to play back during dinner parties on my big rig!!!--sound "just like CDs," for what that's worth. Could I get LP-like sound by putting the deck on cones, points, or pods? It never occurred to me. I felt it was too "low-fi" to tweak. Am I a snob?

01. Head demagnatizer 02. Keep everything squeaky clean (capstans, rubber wheels, all heads) 03. Find an alignment tape to zero in your record/playback heads. Basically, this tape (I own one from ??? Discwasher ??? Geo-Tape ???) has identical white noise recorded out-of-phase on each track. Next, you set your playback (receiver, preamp, whatever) to mono and play the tape while adjusting your play head azimuth (sic?). The sound of the white noise comes close to null when truly aligned! Cool stuff!

I always had my Naks (5 in total) internally tweaked for Maxell UDXL II by a tech and that seemed to make the most difference. Sound floor dropped, dynamics went up as I could run very hot and avoid distortion and the phasing just seemed to be dead on. No Dolby as that seemed to roll off the high end and do funny things with phase. I will tolerate a bit of tape hiss for a markedly truer reproduction.