Hi there ! My name is Anthème and I'm a 21 years old cassette enjoyer from France ! Super happy to join the forum after spending hours and hours on it. I've always been passionated with cassettes, but lately I found out that I could just grab my first portable cassette player, a Sony TCS 430 (that I love so much) and then I fell into the rabbit hole of fixing walkmans. I had to replace the belts of course, but also there was a buzzing noise that I got rid of by cleaning and cycling the play/switch button. I set the azimuth and voilà !! I also had the immense joy of buying a mint Sony D6C for 80euors, it came with a faulty IC601 that I replaced myself from a DD11 that I couldn't repair. I really felt so proud of myself at that moment, I had never done micro-soldering, just a few wires here and there, and even if I don't really understand what is going on in the electronics I still managed to succeed in something that was very intimidating for me ahah. Now everything works exept a little thing that will be soon posted in /tech ... I feel really grateful for all the posts about walkmans issues and how to fix them on this forum, it helped me a lot, thank you people ! Now I'm pursuing my cassette hobby and I think I'll just really start collecting and fixing walkmans that I like. Can't wait to learn more with you and get to know you all better !
Welcome and the only thing I envy of you is that I cannot do micro soldering because I shake when holding the soldering iron for something that small. That and the only electronic tool that I use is a a VOM. When it needs to be more involved than that, I let someone else repair it, whatever it may be.
Welcome to the forum and good luck with your repairs, feel free to post your adventures! My Mate Vince on YouTube does a lot of surface mount repairs and started as a beginner, he has a lot of good advice for equipment and troubleshooting.