Opened up a Sony M-1000 for the first time today in order to replace the belts however after reassembling it, the speaker stopped working. I can hear sound through the headphone jack but it’s the tape recording monitor/microphone, not the microcassette that’s heard. Both were working normal albeit with a bad belt prior to taking it apart. Honestly not sure what I’ve done wrong as every screw is accounted for and in the right place. I don’t see any damaged wires and they too were resoldered in their original positions. I even swapped the speaker out from a donor to no avail so I’m don’t believe the speaker is dead. All that said clearly something isn’t in its right place or got damaged. Anyone have this experience, even in a different model? Having trouble figuring out where to go from here. Apologies if this post isn’t appropriate as it’s a microcassette player.
I started pulling one apart, lot's of little wires in there, I'd double check continuity on the speaker wires, they're so small, just a little pinch would break one. These units are notorious for high speed squeal, that loud buzz when playing. I'm not skilled enough to know what the root cause is, maybe bad capacitors? One of these days I should send one over to Jorge for the doctor's opinion. Most mc dictation recorders seem to last forever, even the cheap plastic ones but for some reason the M-1000 has a high rate of not working. Good luck, let us know if you find anything, do you have a service manual? I think I remember them being hard to find, nexfero had one but he's disappeared from the forum. quaz30 likes microcassette but he doesn't have the M-1000.
Wow, appreciate you taking yours apart to help! You’re right plenty of little wires, and more tiny screws than I care to deal with lol. I just swapped out the speaker wires with the ones from the donor on the chance that they did get pinched somehow but all issues still remain. Unfortunately I don’t have the service manual cause as you mentioned, they’re not easily available. I did wonder if somehow a cap went bad during disassembly. I just don’t know how to pinpoint it without the service manual. But also, I only desoldered and soldered wires so not sure how I could have done any damage to them? Probably gonna have to shelve this one till I come across that manual. Thanks again for the help!
My wires are pretty tight and tilting the circuit board up to get to the belt could easily do some damage. Stuck in Time opened one up and posted photos. The old belt was still solid but hard (and would slip), It measures about 5" exactly but I think it's slightly stretched so I went with something like 4.9." https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/stereo-sony-microcassette-recorders-another-grail-found.3968/ For me personally these units either have the speaker buzz or just don't work. I didn't mind taking it apart, I used my Vessel JIS Screwdriver set, Wiha ESD Micro-Screwdriver for the stand-offs and Wiha magnetizer to help with picking up the little screws. I also use a hand magnifying glass. Sometimes I also use painters tape to hold all of the screws, you can lay them down in the order you take them out and they tend to stay stuck on it. You guys might already do this stuff but if anyone else was wondering.....
As messy as mine is, it does look good from what I can tell. I think it could have to do with the Record function activating when I press Play which might explain why I hear the recording monitor with headphones in. I’m guessing this is cutting off audio to the speaker cause it normally wouldn’t play the recording monitor through the speaker. From there I looked at the plastic switch in the cassette bay that detects the recording tab and it looks mechanically functional, but I can’t press the Record button down even when I manually activate that switch so maybe the cap for that went bad or I gotta spray it down with contact cleaner. Gettin’ closer!
Good tips! I like to keep a flat fridge magnet around for those tiny screws. Mentioned in my post above, but I now think it has something to do with the recording switch. I can’t press the Record button down even when the plastic switch in the cassette bay is manually activated and I think whenever I press Play it is actually turning the Record function on. Gonna take another look at the board and leaf switches to see if I can trace the issue.
So turns out I neglected to properly nest this white plastic switch into its metal cradle when assembling the board back to the mechanism…And with that the problem is solved! Thought I’d add for anyone in the future.
