Hello everyone, this is my first post here so sorry if I’m doing things wrong. I have recently acquired a Sony TPS-L2 Walkman and upon replacing the belts I have found that the play head no longer disengages all the way when I press stop. This causes cassettes to get stuck inside the Walkman. Sometimes the head also doesn’t engage with the tape when play is pressed. Has anyone else ever encountered this problem? I will try and post pictures soon.
Hello and welcome to the forum ! The head bridge not retracting when you press stop is most likely caused by the fact you either did not install a spring or that spring was missing in the first place. The spring I am talking about is connected from the play button to the flywheel bracket. Given that in order to replace the belts you will need to remove that bracket, it can happen that you don't clip the spring back. If the spring is missing, I can provide dimensions so you can order a new one on Aliexpress. As for the second problem: what do you mean by head doesn't engage with tape sometimes ? That the play button does not latch ? As for pictures, I recommend using the "Upload a File" button in the bottom right, not attaching pictures from the gallery. If you encounter the problem that files do not show up after progress bar disappears, just ignore it. They will appear after you post/save.
Old cassette tapes can also be an issue. There's a small foam pad under the tape which makes it ride over the head evenly. If you can see the foam pad, that is most likely not an issue, if it's missing you'll have to replace it.
Thanks for the information, that spring does seem to have been the culprit. What I meant by the head not engaging with the tape was that tape head would not move all the way forward even when play was pressed down fully and latched. That issue also seems to have gone away. The buttons still feel a bit sticky so I’ll play some tapes and keep an eye on it.
I don't have a TPS-L2 so I don't know the insides but a lot of the pre-80's players had lot's of sliding metal parts. The lube drys up and gets sticky preventing nice mechanical movement between the sliding metal plates. This needs to be cleaned up and some new lube applied. I try to take apart as little as possible because they can be complicated, and watch the movement while cleaning and lubing until everything until it works fine. Do not force anything. With a valuble unit like this I'd keep it in good working condition by cleaning those sticky controls.
My personal recommendation is to try to use it for some time if the buttons are just a bit sticky. If it starts to get loose, I would say just leave it alone. Disassemblying the mechanism is very involved on this one and the chance of losing parts or doing something wrong is high (especially when you have not done it before). I will link an old tutorial that I did about this, which covers only the rotating parts: https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/sony-tps-l2-wm-3-restoration-tutorial-mechanical.7123/ (this is something that should be done, but also is pretty involved to do properly). Even I would not bother to completely disassemble and relubricate all the sliding metal parts, as in most cases that's not necessary. What I usually do on these is what is shown on that tutorial, a deeper cleaning of motor pulley (in some cases), clean the potentiometers and switches with contact cleaner, install a new pinch roller (when needed), adjust tape speed and that's pretty much about it.
I’ve been using it since I started this thread and it’s been fine, I’ll probably edit the post saying the issue has been solved.
