I recently picked up this Aiwa HS-J350 off the Bay. I had one already, a parts unit with corrosion issues and a torn flex cable between the board and head. It was good I had two as I ended up using parts from both. The newly acquired one also had a name and phone number scratched into the case. Needed a belt first - easy enough. Desolder the head flex cable from the PCB and remove a bunch of tiny screws. The board can lay out of the way with the extra length of the wires still attached. Clean belt path and lube the moving bits. Mostly reassembled, tested okay, then finished reassembly. Plays beautifully on side A, intermittent sound on side B. Thought I’d missed a tab on resoldering the head cable, but turns out the playback selector switch actuated by the mechanism was flaky. Tried DeoxIT, but no improvement. Hah! I’ve got a parts unit - stoke the switch off the other board and transplanted onto the good board. Now we have good, consistent sound from A and B! I rather like these mid 1980s Aiwas. They don’t suffer the capacitor issues of later models, and their mechanisms are less fiddly than the earlier models. I also find their sound to be a bit richer than similar Sony models, too.
Nice! The sound is not only richer, these earlier models are way more powerful in terms of output. Stamina was not that important
I've been fixing an HS-J360, bought as-is and not working. The J360 seems to be the same as the J350 but without the chrome. I bought it to swap out a reverse gear assembly into an HS-J09. Both the J360 and J09, and many other Aiwa's use the same 2ME-7 mechanism. It turned out the lack of reverse on the J09 was caused by something else, so I put a new belt in the J360. The remaining issue with the J360 is a broken OSC/Dolby slide switch. Both the external knob and the internal switch were broken. If you'd be interested in selling one or both pieces from your donor J350, I'd be into doing that. I believe the J350 has white external knobs, but I could paint it black. The external OSC/Dolby knob is different, longer than the other three. The internal switch is the same part number as the tape type selection switch: 87-036-020-010. You mentioned you had a torn ribbon cable. I ran into this and like you found there is no ready solution. I can suggest a repair that does not involve the micro soldering needed to bridge the trace break using fine wire. Using the damaged ribbon cable as a base, I connected thin "transformer" wires between the ends of the ribbon cable. I soldered the ends to the ribbon cable terminals. The parts could be glued or taped together. Usually the device has enough clearance for this arrangement. In fact it ocurred to me people could make up replacement flat flex cables by using any suitable thin plastic as the base layer.
I just added another player to the collection - a J360! Fresh belt installed and it had one SMD cap floating around loose inside. Replaced the capacitor and got it back together this morning. Cleaned up and plays awesome! Left to right, HS-J360, HS-J350, and HS-J330.
The J360, J09, J9 and J600 use the same Aiwa 2ME-7 mechanism. But the J360 chassis is different to accommodate the larger batteries. And the J360 has an onboard microphone. The main boards are different, despite having the same functions except for the J360 lacking an equalizer. I don't know if all these models use the same tape heads. I don't understand how a capacitor could be rattling around loose inside, other than a botched previous repair attempt. If someone knows enough to track down and remove a bad capacitor, wouldn't they be able to solder it? Update on my J360. I wasn't confident of my repair of the tape switch, so I found an identical switch online and replaced it.
