Hi everyone
Purchased one of these from an auction site after reading a few posts about them on here and watched to get my hands on one of the later silver boxes with the huge EQ and crazy clock!
Whilst everything was 'working' and physically the unit was in good condition albeit quite dirty, it has required quite a number of hours of TLC to bring it back to good working and cosmetic condition.
First step was a good clean as the unit itself was filthy, some basic polishing of all the plastics and removing some dead bugs which had formed a nest in some of the screw holes. A good cleaning of the heads and pinch rollers which are in good condition. Both cassette decks sounded quite muffled so I adjusted the azimuth of the heads which got the sound into focus.
A few days later I tore the unit down and cleaned out all the pots with de-oxit and polished all the switches. Getting all the little buttons on the EQ to shine again took at least an hour and a half of careful plastic polishing.
The following issues required correction;
The supply spindles of each tape deck were quite dry and so i had to remove them and replace the lithium grease. This was causing very slow fast forward and rewind performance.
After running for a while both cassette decks would start to make quite a loud vibration noise which I put down to dried up grease on the back of the capstan flywheels. I removed the capstans and lubed them and applied new grease and all seems quite. See the pic with the red arrow.
I added a drop of oil to each motor spindle. I noticed one motor got warm after half an hour of running.
The controls were quite hard to activate especially the door opening mechanisms, I lubed all the switches and moving parts of the mechanism. The RR and FF buttons are still a little stiff although i suspect this is just how the unit is.
I am waiting for a belt kit to arrive however in the meantime gave the existing belts and associated pulleys a good clean down with alcohol. They are of course a little loose but still working good enough.
The box itself sounds good although I found the bass a little boomy so I added some sound deadening to the speaker enclosures which has flatted out the bass a little which is great.
There is one last issue which is after running for about half an hour, the right hand deck will slow down a little, its quite noticeable. There is no noise or anything untoward when this happens. If you pause the deck and start again it runs correctly for a second or so and then slows down - any advice here? I am suspecting either the motor needs another drop of oil or the belts are just warming up and slipping?
Anyhow here are some pics... enjoy
Drew
Purchased one of these from an auction site after reading a few posts about them on here and watched to get my hands on one of the later silver boxes with the huge EQ and crazy clock!
Whilst everything was 'working' and physically the unit was in good condition albeit quite dirty, it has required quite a number of hours of TLC to bring it back to good working and cosmetic condition.
First step was a good clean as the unit itself was filthy, some basic polishing of all the plastics and removing some dead bugs which had formed a nest in some of the screw holes. A good cleaning of the heads and pinch rollers which are in good condition. Both cassette decks sounded quite muffled so I adjusted the azimuth of the heads which got the sound into focus.
A few days later I tore the unit down and cleaned out all the pots with de-oxit and polished all the switches. Getting all the little buttons on the EQ to shine again took at least an hour and a half of careful plastic polishing.
The following issues required correction;
The supply spindles of each tape deck were quite dry and so i had to remove them and replace the lithium grease. This was causing very slow fast forward and rewind performance.
After running for a while both cassette decks would start to make quite a loud vibration noise which I put down to dried up grease on the back of the capstan flywheels. I removed the capstans and lubed them and applied new grease and all seems quite. See the pic with the red arrow.
I added a drop of oil to each motor spindle. I noticed one motor got warm after half an hour of running.
The controls were quite hard to activate especially the door opening mechanisms, I lubed all the switches and moving parts of the mechanism. The RR and FF buttons are still a little stiff although i suspect this is just how the unit is.
I am waiting for a belt kit to arrive however in the meantime gave the existing belts and associated pulleys a good clean down with alcohol. They are of course a little loose but still working good enough.
The box itself sounds good although I found the bass a little boomy so I added some sound deadening to the speaker enclosures which has flatted out the bass a little which is great.
There is one last issue which is after running for about half an hour, the right hand deck will slow down a little, its quite noticeable. There is no noise or anything untoward when this happens. If you pause the deck and start again it runs correctly for a second or so and then slows down - any advice here? I am suspecting either the motor needs another drop of oil or the belts are just warming up and slipping?
Anyhow here are some pics... enjoy
Drew
