Denon DN-720R cassette deck problem

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

G'day,

Just wondered if anyone could provide a solution to this (probably isn't
quite the right newsgroup but oh well...)

I was given a Denon DN-720R cassette deck for next to nothing, and it seemed
to be in pretty good condition - played a couple of tapes on it, and it was
just fine..played another the next day, and this thing just seemed to suffer
a case of speed-drift just out of the blue. It was easy to spot as the music
just went up in pitch a little and stayed there for a few minutes, then went
back down to it's normal playing speed. This unit has a variable pitch
control so I checked to see if it was engaged, but it wasn't.

This appears to be a decent machine but this problem's got me good as it
only happens at random. I tried that and a few other tapes in another
machine and they were fine. Where do I start looking to fix something like
this? Is this a case of the motors dying out or belts needing replacement
or..?

Thanks :-)