After some reading of this forum and the maintenance manual I finally got my RS-1500 to record and playback last night. The root cause, the machine was so dirty and had so much buildup of "stuff" on the mechanism and heads that it couldn't read or make a strong signal for the tape. After cleaning the tape path and heads I recorded Jacqui Naylors "Shelter" and learned something else, 15 ips really eats up some tape!
Now that we've seen the ballpark it is time to step up and try for first base. This is really fun! Thanks Doc for going in this direction.
Regards, Chuck