Hi all, another day another belt swapped. I had to fully take apart this gorgeous WM-36 to clean lubricant off one of the latches, which was so slippery the case window would not stay open. Have thoroughly cleaned the board with IPA and, in the process, I removed a lot of the grease present. I thought this was a good idea to prevent it from getting everywhere again but I think I've run into a problem... And I think that grease was necessary, so if there's any specific brand of grease I need to purchase please let me know Removing the ribbon cables was interesting too, not come across connectors like this before... Needless to say it all comes apart quite nicely, cleaned the tap head, capstan etc. in the process too. Which brings me to my problem. When I press play or rewind, the player will keep playing or rewinding and the red battery LED will stay on until I press stop or something else, in which case rinse and repeat. However when I press fast forward it will only keep fast forwarding as long as I hold down on it, if I let go or press another button it was just stop but otherwise it's fully functional again (presumably after many years, the old belts were dire...) I checked inside the case on the PCB and the mechanism is definitely working but not staying in place? What could be the cause? Was very pleased with my disassembly of this beautiful electronic and sure I hadn't messed anything up but would appreciate any pointers, thanks. There's always something to be learnt every day. UPDATE: The fast forward and latch issues have been fixed, just need to deal with another problem that I've explained in greater detail in my reply to speedy2.0. Thanks! Kindest Regards, Stereomecha99
Latches which don’t hold is usually caused by springs which are no longer factory spec by the smallest amount of tension. Combined with grease, dust etc the latch no longer travels the full distance. But also, what can happen when screws are replaced is the tension is too high and it creates a fraction too much tightness on an unsuspecting moving part. Often it’s because the screw needs to be tight because the board it’s screwing into has worn, so instinctively you overtighten - perhaps some lock tite can be useful. This overtight screw can also cause shorts, pressure on wire connections, motor speed faults etc etc.
Hi there speedy, I'm glad to inform that the latch issue has been solved (sort of). It will still occassionally slam shut but near as I can tell there was no spring mechanism, simply because on the plastic shell there is no area for holding a spring if you know what I mean. When the door is opened, the latches press against the very top of the case so there should be natural tension being applied on them. Because the part where the latch moves on was greasy, under normal circumstances gravity was the prevalent force and it was snapping shut, which obviously wasn't observed when the Walkman was upside down due to the opposite principle, the door was opening with the direction of the force. Anyway I cleaned the grease buildup best as I could and that seems to have done the trick! Quite pleased but as you say I will look into getting some lock tite. Now about the FF issue, that was fixed too! There was a bit of tape responsible for all the playing/rewinding/FF mechanisms and it has two ends that basically get pressed together in different positions to trigger different functions. The ends of the tape have metal contacts that need to press together for continuity, and before the metal contacts for FF were staying together for a few seconds then naturally moving apart a bit. I fixed this, after a bit of a headache with fiddling about with other things, by bending the top bit of the tape back down to be straight again, and hopefully that should be the long-term solution. ONE MORE ISSUE has reared its head, though I think it was present on this unit when I bought it - when I adjust the volume, at lower volumes the music changes channels or becomes mono on different sides and eventually becomes stereo again at the lowest volume. I'm not sure if capacitors are to blame as they all have flat heads and suspect I may have messed with the ribbon cable that connects to the tape head, etc. a bit too much (hadn't encountered this kind of ribbon cable connector ever and saw no disassemblies of this online, so I just took it as it came and it was a fun experience! I believe this may be a common issue on quite a few old Walkmans so I would sincerely appreciate any advice, thanks for your interest. Have a great evening, stereomecha99 UPDATE: Apologies for the 'b*tch* before, I meant to write 'a bit of a headache' and my mind must have just slipped!
Glad you got the first issues sorted! I usually find some spray deoxit, contact cleaner does the trick with dropouts. You then spin the potentiometer 100-odd times fully to work out the dust... I believe you can check the status of capacitors with a multimeter, or replace with a modern equivalent but that is often tricky
I'm gonna have to look into de-oxit, I've been using IPA only for years. Just for posterity I checked the capacitors for continuity yesterday and they're A-okay! Only thing that's left now is the door, it still doesn't stay open... Having studied photos there's seemingly no spring involved in the mechanism, and it arrived with me like this... Oh well, it works a treat anyway so I'm happy, let's leave this as a case closed for now with room for improvement later
Ah, interesting point about the screws. I've loosened them up a bit, latch is the same but as long as it's not running the risk of a short now...
Hi speedy2.0, good news - the latch is fixed! I determined that there was no spring present in this mechanism, after carefully studying in it action of the right side the latch there is a plastic thing attached to a metal joint that moves up and down along this joint. Somehow there's so longer enough contact between the metal and plastic, which makes locking in place impossible for it. After melting the plastic a bit using my soldering iron, it solidified upon the metal and is now in complete contact with it, meaning the latch mechanism now works as it should again. Hopefully this is long term so it lasts at least another 20-30 years, but if it breaks then I think I will simply design and machine a drop-in part to fit into that gap, allowing the latch to lock onto something other than this metal joint which also accumulates a lot of grease from the mechanism. Thanks for your help, and I hope you have a great day! Also as for cleaning the volume pot I ended up desoldering it entirely off the board and leaving it to soak in IPA for an hour (I bought it in bulk ). I also dropped some IPA into the potentiometer pots. After leaving everything to dry for another hour or so, I resoldered in the slider and now the volume adjustment is spot-on. So so happy to see this beautiful piece of technology working as it should again! I knew when I saw it that I wouldn't sell it off, for a 'budget' model it looks incredibly sleek and I love the 5-band equalization.
