Hi all, I have a couple of tcd5m. I've been using them for a while. One had a horrid knocking noise caused by a groove in the capstan tyre where it had been sitting unused for decades. I have now replaced the tyre. But, both of them make a noticeable hum or whine when running although you can only hear it with the sound down. I'm just wondering if they all do this?, my little marantz pmd430 is almost silent.
@steve.55 Where did you find a new capstan tire for the D5M ? I have been interested in that for a long time and was hoping that Marian Mihokm will make a replacement availabe one day, but I'm not aware of such news. To answer your question, the answer depends. With old rubber cleaned and all rotating parts relubricated (including the motor), they're still a bit noisy, but a lot less than without doing these steps. I can give you a much more relevant example: the WM-D6C. That walkman (which is very similar to the D5M in terms of mechanics) is always very noisy if it was never serviced and becomes almost silent after servicing: new rubber, lubrication and motor spindle polish. On the D5M and D6/D6C, a lot of the times I have seen non-uniform wear in the spindle. My solution to this problem is run the unit with motor taken out of the mech, and push a small piece of 2000 grit sandpaper against the spindle for 30 seconds. That helps both with noise and with wow&flutter.
Thanks, i've oiled the capstan bearing etc, the capstan is silent when spun without the motor, the motor is silent went lifted off the capstan, what is the best way to lubricate the motor?. Maybe it is something else causing it. They both now sound exactly the same, it's annoying as I want to sell one of them. I got the tire off ebay it came from Germany. If you search for idler tire tc-d5m you will find it.
Idler tire is different than capstan tire. But even the idler tire (the play one) is T-shaped, so not a standard one. I did search on ebay with keywords "idler tire tc-d5m" and the only relevant results were TC-D5Ms for sale and a belt kit. So please provide a link. For lubricating the motor, I do the following: 1. Put some oil in the front bushing, while pulling on the spindle. Use watch oil for best results. 2. Remove the back cap and spray some contact cleaner (Kontakt 60) into the motor to both lubricate and clean the commutator and brushes. The internal bearing can't be lubricated without disassemblying the motor, but it's the front one which has the most load on it, so I wouldn't worry about back bearing. 3. Let the unit run for a couple of minutes, so the oil gets all the way into the bearing and cleaner does its job.
Another aspect that I want to add is you need to align the motor so it's perpendicular to the flywheel. It has some play in the mounting bracket specifically for that adjustment. If the motor sits at an angle different than 90 degrees, this will increase the noise. By the way, what wow&flutter figure do you get with the new capstan ring ?
It was sitting off centre, I think the carrier bearing is worn to be honest, probably because of the way the spring pulls the motor. I did have enough adjustment to get the spindle pointing straight at the capstan though. W&F I don't have a test for this, but a 3kz test tape seems fairly stable. The only other thing i've noticed is that there are 2 plastic washers on the capstan spindle, but the manual also shows a fibre washer. Other posts i've read also mention the same thing so maybe there should be a third washer but it's disintegrated .
About the washers, I think the third one wasn't fitted there in the first place. All units I have repaired only had 2 washers. I believe the service manual may depict a very early version, which was later changed. That's not an issue anyway, because you can adjust the thrust play with the adjustment screw if it happens to be high. You can measure the wow&flutter with WFGUI. First link in here: http://www.ant-audio.co.uk/index.php?cat=post&qry=library
Hi again, thanks for the advice, as an experiment I swapped capstans between the two and they are both now much quieter, don't know what's going on there. One question though, one of them has a slight crackle through the speaker on play, it does not change with volume, sometimes goes away. Head phones and line out sound perfect, any idea where to start looking?
Strage phenomenon with the capstan swap. Do both have new rubber ring on them ? About the crackling, I would clean the playback/record switch thouroghly with contact cleaner. Move it back and forth 30-40 times after applying contact cleaner. All the contacts and pots are very oxidized in these TC-D5Ms.
No, the one with the crackle was running fairly quiet, the noisy one had the the new ring, before I fitted the new ring it had a really loud knocking due to a groove across the old ring. I bought the one with the crackle for spares as I was told it was scrap due to it making screeching noises and the vu needles jumping up and down. A quick spray in the record switch cured that, just leaving this crackle. I'm nearly there now as they are both useable and really nice cosmetically. I only need one so I want to sell the best one.
If you are sure the rec/pb switch is perfectly cleaned, then the cracke is likely caused by a bad transistor: either a discrete one or one inside an IC. You have to play a test tape and trace the signal with a scope to identify where the issue is. Check if the cracke only appears on headphone out/speaker or on the line out as well.
Thanks, I don't have a way of testing, so i'll keep the one with the crackle. I rarely use the rubbish speaker anyway, it's either headphones or line out which are both fine.
If it's just the speaker that's cracking, you can certainly use it as it is. It's probably either the speaker itself (voicecoil separated from cone or something similar) or the speaker amplifier, which is on a separate PCB above cassette compartment.
Update, in the second photo there is a yellow earth lead to the right of the speaker, this was loose. I have tightened it up, crackling gone !
