Hi,

 What could cause me to always have to adjust head alignment,Almost on a tape to tape basis .   Its on my Aiwa hs px 101 .  All i have checked is the head its self and it is solid and stays were it is adjusted to (i carry a tiny screwdriver with me now). 

Any ideas greatly appreciated as its beginning to  wind me up

I read between the lines. Problem can be the tapes itself? Recording on each tape might be having a different azimuth.

Try with a different deck to check the consistency of the tapes.

Hi

Could be that the head itself is slightly worn.

I too used to regularly realign my HS-PX101.

It was because my tapes were recorded on different decks, which unfortunately had different alignment.

Get it right & the Dolby C on this walkman is very impressive...

Nakamichi Dragon adjusts heads all the time to match tapes for optimal PB performance.    Azimuth is the achilles heel for tape.

like anything analogue, there always is an optimum centre of balance to be reached!

but to make things favourable I always make a point of forwarding and rewinding a tape when wanting to play it, as it settles the tape down, this I learned the hard way from a video tape that got chewed up, if you look through the window of a tape thats been constantly stop started/ auto reversed etc... you will see ridges in the spooled tape!

 also when listening to your tape on something portable keep the player in the same position