The Introduction
Hi, folks. I'm trying to get my JVC RC-M50JW repaired. It's had a "sluggish" cassette deck almost every moment of use since early October 2015, following my ordering it -- in what seemed to be fair to good condition -- from an L.A.-based eBay seller late in the previous month.
The Story
In fact, yesterday evening I was reminded of how bad my woes with the JVC are. In planning on sending the stereo off for (more) repair, I decided to test the 'M50 again while awaiting the arrival of shipping supplies. I managed to play back two long club/dance tracks on a 1993, eleven-track dance-music audiocassette compilation. I say "managed to" because of the tape-tangling scare (or "tape-bunching scare") that the JVC put me through nearly five minutes into track 1's playback. I ended up first playing track 1 on the non-recording tape deck of a TEAC CD-burner that we have here at home. (That playback was possible only after using my BIC pen to loosen up and adjust the once-stuck reels of the probably long-unplayed audiotape.) Track 1 is listed by the record label, Epic/Sony Music, as being 7:20 in run time, but the TEAC's tape deck -- long suspected to be overspeeding -- was timed as playing the track in 7 minutes 5.90 seconds. Back to the JVC I went and -- feeling quite apprehensive -- I played back track 1. Its run time: close to eight minutes. (I forget exactly how long.) Track 2 -- the compilation's longest, officially nine minutes thirty-one in run time -- clocked in, with my Casio, at over ten minutes, two seconds. (By the way, the music is engaging, lyrically relatively spare fare -- with the opening track's female singer's vocals certainly recognizable -- but track 1 doesn't quite have the probably instant memorability of the hit song by the same artist.)
The Request
Anyway, I popped in here to ask: how many of you have used a mail-in (or "mail-order") boombox-repair service? Perhaps the answer is obvious: many members of websites such as BoomBoxery have sent their Aiwas, their Panasonics, their Sonys, etc., to be fixed up by other members with whom they have extensively and satisfyingly corresponded -- and, at times, whom they have met beforehand.
So maybe one should ask: how many here on BoomBoxery have mailed equipment to an unfamiliar person's apparently professional audio-electronics repair business -- one of a clearly vanishing breed of professions? I've corresponded with the owner of the business (which he apparently set up back in the Eighties). It took a week for his first reply, but he seems honest and confident enough. The name of the repair business is Hi Tech Service. It's based in Nashville, Tennessee. Ring a bell, anyone? (Uh, perhaps more to the point: is Tom, the owner of the business, here on BoomBoxery and/or on that other website? I kind of feel that he is, though he doesn't say so in his replies to me.)
In Conclusion ...
So, gentle members, before I ship out any valuable hardware ... what's what here?
Hi, folks. I'm trying to get my JVC RC-M50JW repaired. It's had a "sluggish" cassette deck almost every moment of use since early October 2015, following my ordering it -- in what seemed to be fair to good condition -- from an L.A.-based eBay seller late in the previous month.
The Story
In fact, yesterday evening I was reminded of how bad my woes with the JVC are. In planning on sending the stereo off for (more) repair, I decided to test the 'M50 again while awaiting the arrival of shipping supplies. I managed to play back two long club/dance tracks on a 1993, eleven-track dance-music audiocassette compilation. I say "managed to" because of the tape-tangling scare (or "tape-bunching scare") that the JVC put me through nearly five minutes into track 1's playback. I ended up first playing track 1 on the non-recording tape deck of a TEAC CD-burner that we have here at home. (That playback was possible only after using my BIC pen to loosen up and adjust the once-stuck reels of the probably long-unplayed audiotape.) Track 1 is listed by the record label, Epic/Sony Music, as being 7:20 in run time, but the TEAC's tape deck -- long suspected to be overspeeding -- was timed as playing the track in 7 minutes 5.90 seconds. Back to the JVC I went and -- feeling quite apprehensive -- I played back track 1. Its run time: close to eight minutes. (I forget exactly how long.) Track 2 -- the compilation's longest, officially nine minutes thirty-one in run time -- clocked in, with my Casio, at over ten minutes, two seconds. (By the way, the music is engaging, lyrically relatively spare fare -- with the opening track's female singer's vocals certainly recognizable -- but track 1 doesn't quite have the probably instant memorability of the hit song by the same artist.)
The Request
Anyway, I popped in here to ask: how many of you have used a mail-in (or "mail-order") boombox-repair service? Perhaps the answer is obvious: many members of websites such as BoomBoxery have sent their Aiwas, their Panasonics, their Sonys, etc., to be fixed up by other members with whom they have extensively and satisfyingly corresponded -- and, at times, whom they have met beforehand.
So maybe one should ask: how many here on BoomBoxery have mailed equipment to an unfamiliar person's apparently professional audio-electronics repair business -- one of a clearly vanishing breed of professions? I've corresponded with the owner of the business (which he apparently set up back in the Eighties). It took a week for his first reply, but he seems honest and confident enough. The name of the repair business is Hi Tech Service. It's based in Nashville, Tennessee. Ring a bell, anyone? (Uh, perhaps more to the point: is Tom, the owner of the business, here on BoomBoxery and/or on that other website? I kind of feel that he is, though he doesn't say so in his replies to me.)
In Conclusion ...
So, gentle members, before I ship out any valuable hardware ... what's what here?
