Hi there, a new episode of the never ending repairs ! I got this strange walkman couple of days ago, obviously lured by the touch features. Here the dissasembly done so far and outcomes: Taking out the back cover, reveals the guts: Here some side views without the cover: Battery and DC jack: Bottom? Phone jack side with the plastic switches out. On to the next step, desoldering to et access to the PCB and mechanical section. You need to desolder: Motor ribbon cable. Battery positive terminal (black cable). Solenoid terminals (red and black). Switch cables (blue and green). Touch controls ribbon cable. Head ribbon (under the silver cover. You can remove this cover as well). This is the first view you get. And here the PCB alone, both sides: OPTIONAL: You can remove the plastic frame that holds the battery. I had no idea what was underside, so I took it apart. Nothing spectacular and it can be left there. Here is the frame alone. Removing it can help to clean the battery contacts. This unit had a lot of green stuff on it. Time to put the belt, this is the routing: If needed, you can take the door out. The 3 screws on the Battery/DC jack side are holding the support side of the door. Take this 3 first. There are another 2 screws on the jacks/switches side. One holds the plastic door to the frame, and the other holds the door to the hinge. This should be the last screw to remove. When removing the plastic door, be careful to lift it from the hinge screw, since the other side of the door is hold just by a plastic piece. If not careful, you can break this small part and the door will be loose from one side. Here the plastic part detail: And to put it back, just follow the steps in reverse order. After doing the repair, I was expecting to have a working unit, but alas, it does not. I have not gumstick battery to use, but I can use an external power supply. BE VERY CAREFUL HERE, as this unit is powered only by 1.5v. When powering on, nothing happens. If I touch any of the touch controls, I can hear 1 beep on the headphones, but nothing else happens. I cannot hear the motor at all and the reels do not react. I can only hear 1 beep when touching the controls, but If I touch them again, the beep is gone. I have to power off and power back on to have a beep reaction. Asking for your expertise, what else can be checked to see if it is alive or just a very light piece of history? Thank you all!
Hi nice write up and pictures, I have one of these branded as a Lo-D CP-S2, it's functionality is exactly the same as yours. I never went any further with mine, if I was going to re-visit mine I would probably replace all the electrolytic caps on the back of the board first, they may look ok but they will be dead or way out of spec. I can see some corrosion on the legs of some so they are or have been leaking, see what difference this makes and continue from there.
Hi Dave! Thanks for the advice. I have taken out all the caps and yes, most of them are out of specs (most of the 22uF are reading around 30-33). I replaced some, but I need to get some smaller ones. You need 3x5mm ones to fit on this compact unit. The good thing is that, adter the first repacement and tests, motor spins and starts doing stuff, so I am on the right path. Shall let you know when the new caps arrive.
Finally, the caps arrived. All caps were replaced on the electronic side. When testing, it all seem to work, however, the mechanical part felt weird, too tight on the cog operations. After careful inspection, it turned out that one cog was out of its place. There the details: I had to remove several cogs to reach the broken one. First you need to open the cassette door to reach the ring securing the big flywheel. Be sure to remove the 4 small cogs, they are not fixed and can rotate and be removed freely. Then remove the securing ring from the main flywheel. Be careful as it might spring out. The main flywheel will be free and you can take it out from the back side. The first cog to the right of the flywheel was the problem. But this is under 2 other cogs that need to be removed first. This revealed the broken shaft on the problematic cog. Here some pics of the cog, top, bottom and the cog and shaft separated. Using a drop of instant glue (loctite will do), I was able to fix it in place. NOTE that you need to remove the upper cog also. And finally reassembling all back into place. I noticed one detail, I was using a 0.5mm rubber belt for the replacement, however, this proved to be a bit too loose. The ammount of strenght required to move all the mechanism was greater, so I tested with a tighter 0.5mm rubber belt. It did not worked very well, so I used a 0.7mm belt insted. It fits well and is not too tight. I felt it fit better and provides more contact to the main flywheel so the whole mechanism gets better traction. You just need to adjust the tape speed with the small screw mounted on the back of the pcb, which you can access with a small screwdriver on the back of the unit (it is a small hole). As of now, I have a fully working unit. I have noticed some curious behaviours, but I will need to start using it a bit more to test the rest of the functionality. Wow and Flutter are also present but are barely noticeable, it sounds very good. I shall make a new post with the daily tests of this unit. Bye for now !
