I must say, I do really like this Walkman. It's a much later model so it has nice logic controlled mega bass, FM/AM radio, etc. as well as other features like AVLS, which to me seems like it fills Dolby NR's role at this point in time. I didn't have this Walkman back when it was released but all in all it's a very nice-sounding unit with a much quieter mechanism and advanced engineering that probably retailed for quite a reasonable (I don't want to say budget) price back in its heyday. That said, I am really shocked by the fact the went out of their way to make adjusting the potentiometer hard. Initially I believed you needed to keep desoldering the motor's 4 wires from the main PCB every time you need to access the underside, which you do, but if you lift up that PCB quite a bit (but not entirely) by simply dismounting a ribbon cable then that gives access to two potentiometers. Initially I thought one of them was a transformer but as it turns out, THAT is the potentiometer for adjusting the motor speed and the other one is for the radio!! This is not clearly marked on the board either so it took a bit of trial and error, but I believe the music is playing as it should now. This comes after I did some maintenance on my Walkmans so I replaced their then-current Chinese belts with nice precision belts made exactly for them and lubricated the capstan bearings for them all. They should hopefully work as they are right now for many more years to come, fingers crossed and touch wood
