I recently acquired a rather nice TEAC A-4010S tape machine. It was reported to be in good condition, and it was. However, when I tried playing a commercially recorded music tape, the tape broke.
This sort of thing is not uncommon with vintage tapes because they become brittle with age. In addition, many recordings were made with a less-expensive thin tape as opposed to a high quality thick tape. Never underestimate the opportunities for corporations to cut corners.
The machine has a button that allows the user to switch settings between the thicker tapes and thinner ones. Unfortunately, the machine snapped the tapes no matter which setting was used.
Could it be that the A-4010S was out of proper adjustment?
It turns out that this machine had adjustments for tape tension at the reels. I have another machine, from Sony, that does not have such adjustment capabilities. Now the question is, “How are adjustments to tape tension accomplished?”