When Superduper created his -Post your "no love" boxes here- post, I got out my beloved GE. I blew the dust off of it for the photo in that post and then decided to give it some love. I put a cassette in it and hopped in bed. Then fell promptly asleep to it playing an old cassette recording of Casey Kasem's top 40 recorded in 1988. It played beautiful and finished the cassette long after I had retired. It doesn't have auto off function, so it sat there with its dial illuminated until I got up around 4AM and turned it off.
Well, I got up later that morning around 7AM anticipating a great day off on a Saturday. I pressed the power button, flipped the cassette around to the other side, and pressed play. It got revenge for me neglecting it for months and decided to thank me by eating the tape right after the leader. Excellent! I heard what was going on and stopped it before it had a full course meal but I was certainly concerned. It's never eaten a tape...EVER!
I didn't have time to deal with it that morning because my wife and I had somewhere to be, so I turned it off and waited until a day where I could deal with it. Today!
I've had this happen before with other cassette decks and I can tell you from experience, when you have a deck that likes to chew a tape right after the plastic leader ends, 9 times out of 10 its a worn out/bad rubber pinch roller. They can even look perfect and supple with lots of grip and still do this. The first thing I did was shine a flashlight down into the cassette deck at the pinch roller and there was no question about it. It was as shiny as a polished piece of plastic and about as hard as one also.
This is not one of those radios that you can remove the cassette door and get to the pinch roller for replacement. Oh no...The entire deck has to come out and the keys have to come off to get to it.
Well tonight was the night I felt like dealing with it. I keep replacement pinch rollers in various sizes just for an occasion like this. The only thing was, the shaft of the pinch roller was 2.5mm and my replacement pinch rollers are all 2mm center hole. I ran into this exact thing with my Panasonic RX-5050. With it, I cut the old tire off and put the new pinch roller on the old plastic center roller. It worked great, so there's no reason why this shouldn't be the same.
Well I am happy to report that the surgery went well. Everything went as planned and after it was all back together, it played like it did out of the box. There were no surprises and most importantly...no more eating tapes.
So, if anyone wants to see the inside of this fairly rare bird...here it is.
Removed the pinch roller
Check out this hard a$$ pinch roller. Good old father time
New one versus old
All back together. No screws left over
Final Test
Well, I got up later that morning around 7AM anticipating a great day off on a Saturday. I pressed the power button, flipped the cassette around to the other side, and pressed play. It got revenge for me neglecting it for months and decided to thank me by eating the tape right after the leader. Excellent! I heard what was going on and stopped it before it had a full course meal but I was certainly concerned. It's never eaten a tape...EVER!
I didn't have time to deal with it that morning because my wife and I had somewhere to be, so I turned it off and waited until a day where I could deal with it. Today!
I've had this happen before with other cassette decks and I can tell you from experience, when you have a deck that likes to chew a tape right after the plastic leader ends, 9 times out of 10 its a worn out/bad rubber pinch roller. They can even look perfect and supple with lots of grip and still do this. The first thing I did was shine a flashlight down into the cassette deck at the pinch roller and there was no question about it. It was as shiny as a polished piece of plastic and about as hard as one also.
This is not one of those radios that you can remove the cassette door and get to the pinch roller for replacement. Oh no...The entire deck has to come out and the keys have to come off to get to it.
Well tonight was the night I felt like dealing with it. I keep replacement pinch rollers in various sizes just for an occasion like this. The only thing was, the shaft of the pinch roller was 2.5mm and my replacement pinch rollers are all 2mm center hole. I ran into this exact thing with my Panasonic RX-5050. With it, I cut the old tire off and put the new pinch roller on the old plastic center roller. It worked great, so there's no reason why this shouldn't be the same.
Well I am happy to report that the surgery went well. Everything went as planned and after it was all back together, it played like it did out of the box. There were no surprises and most importantly...no more eating tapes.
So, if anyone wants to see the inside of this fairly rare bird...here it is.
Removed the pinch roller
Check out this hard a$$ pinch roller. Good old father time
New one versus old
All back together. No screws left over
Final Test
