This past Wednesday, September 21, 2016 I took the liberty of taking some photographs of this daunting Aiwa CS-600U. I used a Nokia smartphone to take the pictures. All the photographs are of the Aiwa on my bedroom desk -- obviously cleared for the event. The photos should be considerably clearer than those that I've taken of other boomboxes with the older, lower-resolution Samsung cellphone. But, of course, these images are still decidedly lower-res' and the photo' objects are still lesser-posed than the better ones that you Boomboxery bunch have come up with.
Anyway, here we go:
This appears to be the first of five or so of this past Wednesday's photos of the Aiwa CS-600U that I ordered from an Indiana-based eBay seller. The full-spanning, non-insert-ended carry handle is obviously down. The power cord -- a new, kind of hefty item that replaces the missing, mangled or stinky original one -- is not in the frame, attached to the AC jack or otherwise. (Disappointingly, that absence is repeated in all the images.)
The second September 21, 2016 photograph. (Check out that telescopic antenna's "old school" length.) It was perhaps rash of me to place that August 21, 2016 order for it -- and, to begin with, to enter the auction for the item on -- on eBay. The Aiwa was shipped from the Indiana-based eBay seller quite promptly, but my hopes of a relatively easy fix of the non-working cassette deck were dashed when I soon discovered that the tape-heads mechanism was jammed -- to the point of not even fitting an intact, relatively new-condition Fuji DR-I 90-minute normal-bias audiocassette in the tape-deck bay. Boombox-website members have urged me to open the stereo and adjust things like flywheels to "lower" or "reset" the tape-heads mechanism. But with no electronics-repair experience, I
have been kind of ...
Here's the third September 21, 2016 photograph of the outwardly good-looking Aiwa -- this time of its back. One is assured of the unit's versatility with the crop of black-background rear connectors located between the slightly truncated control-panel top and the power-output lower base. And -- if one is like me -- one is also daunted by the eleven or so rear-cabinet screw positions that are quite visible. A reminder of what must be done to stand a chance of fixing the stereo. One also notes the contrast between the colour of the rear cabinet and that of the battery-bay lid. (A good deal bigger, for instance, that that of a JVC RC-M50.)
The first of two September 21, 2016 photographs that shows the "frontal intake," so to speak, of the Aiwa CS-600U: the cassette deck in EJECT mode. This admittedly unspectacular image
tries to show the jammed tape-heads mechanism. At least the white thread-like spool --whatever it is -- near the EJECT latch and the orange-coloured tape-remainder backsplash --whatever it's called -- are quite noticeable.
And here is the second "frontal intake" photo', taken this past Wednesday, of the Aiwa CS-600U. With the cassette deck still in EJECT mode, the image appears to show greater detail; it probably isn't as much of a close-up as this series' fourth picture was. It was from a New Castle, Indiana-based eBay seller -- screen name:
wattek58 -- that I ordered the portable stereo late in August 2016. The brand logo is clearly visible in this photo'; less so is the "Timer Standby System" statement on the "brow" beneath the indicator-lights display and above the relatively interesting-sounding but clearly malfunctioning cassette deck that wouldn't even admit (fit) a 90-minute Fuji DR-I normal-bias audiocassette that, until some four months ago, was in new, unwrapped condition. (Fume) The Fuji audiocassette had been used to record 90 minutes of soul/R&B from late-night FM radio months ago on another eBay-purchased portable stereo; that fact would hardly render the audiocassette unusable after that.
To Confess (Again): I shamefully failed to pay the well-regarded electronics-repair shop for the hours the experts spent working on two other portables of mine: a JVC RC-M50JW and a Helix HX-4633N. My excuse was my persistently suspecting that strange -- indeed, supernatural -- glitches would befall those other stereos' tape decks even after they were repaired. My shirking my customer obligations was likely part of what moved the repair-shop personnel to disavow any more repairing of boomboxes.
So ...: I either get the Aiwa repaired somehow or I live with the snafu or I give the machine away.
Better to look before you leap, yes?