...I always said the shop-bought "musicassettes" were poorer quality than the likes of TDK & unfortunately for my Sony CFD-5, I've been proved right. While giving this excellent auto-reverse deck some exercise (it has 'quick' reverse, music search, Dolby, metal, all on a portable - now there's posh), having happily played many old TDKs, a musicassette copy of Down To Earth by Rainbow (bought by me in the 80s) jammed it Taking it apart: when screws are removed (boombox screwdriver required) the front panel wants to come off but requires the tape door to be open. Some gentle easing led me to discover that the front of the tape door unclips upward & off, revealing a mechanism on the left to override the locked eject button. They actually designed that in, knowing at some point in the future it might be needed. Tape removed, giving access to the screws holding the deck mechanism in. The engineering inside is exquisite - no wonder these were so expensive. Once I had the deck mechanism out (bit nervous by now), I could manually turn the servo wheel to 'park' the deck in stop mode. I then noticed the culprit: the main belt from the motor (which goes 'round two large flywheels) was rather loose, so I need to hunt down my copy of the service manual to find a replacement belt. Then I'll need plenty of courage to attempt a fix - there are wires everywhere for me to accidentally break... I originally got this boomer out with a view to possibly selling, but it's such quality, I don't think I can now...
I had to look it up, that's a beautiful box, I even found a 12 year old thread on audiokarma from Arkay mentioning one sold for over $1000 USD. At the time they were mocking it as BPC but I have a few of those later 80's monster boomboxess that were the bridge between the boombox and the 90's desk stereos. I love that the Sony Beancounters didn't care that they had multiple lines that were very similar, this CFD is so close to the FH Series, just a little different but it look like the same quality but with CD. That's a great Rainbow Cassette and I've been getting some of the same treatment with my 35 year old tapes where they've been getting eaten more, either the rollers are getting gummy or the tape is losing some flexibility, I'm not sure which. Here's a site with the service manual, I can't remember if I've downloaded from them so do at your own risk but it's free. An interesting note is the German Model only goes to 107 on the FM band, I wonder if they broadcast something on 108 they don't want you to hear, otherwise it would be easier to just have all of the boxes go the full band. https://www.manualscenter.com/manuals/sony/cfd5-service-manual.html#.XHWHmqBRdhE
Thanks for the info Mister X (are you an Ultravox fan by any chance?). I had seen that website & they're quite insistent on charging me $5 for the service manual, so I think I'll have a root around in the shed to see if I can find my printed copy
Oh, man... this reminds me of the time a favorite pre-recorded tape actually flipped the ribbon over inside it's casing. Everything up to a few minutes on either side would be fine, then it'd reach the "flipped" point and you'd hear the opposite side--playing in reverse! Being a pre-teen kid, I didn't know what to do other than bring it to my dad, who dat at the kitchen table for a long time... working to fix the problem. He did, thankfully, but whenever it moved past the point where it had flipped, it'd drop-out due to how it stretched oddly.
That reminds me of an old story I've told before: when I bought AC-DCs Back In Black on tape, the entire album was wound on the spools upside down, so you got the album muffled & backwards. The long bell-tolling intro to Hells Bells sounded very weird. After a brief search for satanic messages(!), I returned the tape. Needless to say, the guy in OurPrice didn't believe me & played the tape over the shop sound-system in an attempt to embarrass me ...& then gave me a fresh copy
