Hello from the UK, been a big music collector for many years now, minidisc, vinyl, cassette's. Just started buying old Sony walkmans that I had back in the day for nostalgic purposes. Need some help with an old wm-b39 that I bought with the capstans permanently turning. Point me to the relevant thread. Thanks
Im not sure what would cause the capstans to constantly turn on this model as its a fairly simple unit, unless the mech is stuck in play mode. I just refurbished one of these though and they are a cracking little machine so worth fixing. If you need any help let me know. First thing i would say to do is crack it open and have a look at the mechanism.
I think that is exactly what it is, however I'm not savvy enough to know how to repair it, if it was a belt or something I'd be ok. I'd really like to repair it as it's an awesome little machine.
Well my old China you can always crack it open, take a picture or a short vid and post it here and we will take a look? If not you could always send it to me to look at but I'm sure you could fix this and learn a little something. It's worth looking at how the mech operates when open to see if you can spot anything obvious. Mine worked in a fashion but when open I realised it needed new belts, the mech cleaned and lubed as it was not fully raising when stopped and it was miles out when speed calibrated (despite sounding reasonably good). These are 20 to 30 years old and mostly always need some maintenance now if you want another 20 years out of them...
Il crack it open and take a look and see if I can spot anything. Is there anything I need to be careful of when opening, does the board just lift off away from the mech?
Here is the service manual (different model number but same chassis etc), contains opening instructions. They are a pretty easy one to work on.
Right I've managed to repair one of my wm-b39 but I'm stuck with my other one. Il upload a pic to show you that two of the cells have come off the board and I'm not sure how you are supposed to reattach them.
Those are surface mounted caps mate, they will need to be resoldered on. You will need to get replacements, desolder the old legs from the other ones and solder on new ones. Its pretty tricky. I recapped a walkman recently and it requires a good amount of skill i would say.
