Picked up this fixer upper on the bay

[Starfire]

It's a WM-F18 one of the better Walkmans, has a lot of features but this one must have been dropped at some point.

Bought it not working thought maybe a dirty switch or bad battery contacts but much worse in reality. Popped of the back and nothing popped out at first, but after a closer look with a loupe found the PCB itself was cracked and there were some broken traces, bummer...

So I traced the traces and jumped the broken areas, then also noticed the power jack had broken loose on one leg, so fixed that, then noticed the headphone jack was loose and fixed that, tossed in some batteries and amazingly had radio and power, taped worked but was running to slow so had to open again (at the time didn't realize there is a small hole for adjusting speed without opening, nice feature)

Now it's all working and must say the sound is quite good with a nice high bias tape, close to CD dare I say it, impressive for a Walkman. If you find one pretty cheap pick it up! Now I just need the strap it came with, this thing is so weighty it didn't have a clip, it has a shoulder strap!

 

[mancardo]

This is a nice one... I really like the ones that have the Equalizer.

 

[Starfire]

There is an unbalance in the 2 channels, so going to have to take a look, I don't believe there is an adjustment, but I could make my own I guess.

I think this was one of the first cheaper high end models, but don't quote me, the EQ is nice though works with both tape and radio.