Service attempt of Sony tc-wr820a dual cassette deck.
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- This set has had a hard life.
this video has been pieced together from alot of footage, some of which I thought I had lost, so bear with the sloppy edits.
even after transport service, belt replacement and gear replacement, pinch roller problems and intermittent logic issues with transports made this a nightmare of a machine to work on.
right now it's playable. not great, but playable.
Thank you Jordan!. This is my deck. Long story short, the deck was store with all my original sound equipment for 20+ years taking heat and cold and that I think was what damaged the plastic. only my deck was affected. all other equipment is ok. I like the features and the Dolby noise reduction on this deck and that is auto reverse and record on both decks. I am willing to let him go if I have to. got a replacement for it but lacks a bunch of features. It is what it is I'll guess. Thanks again Jordan. Please see my email I sent you.
a lot of them had that white plastic that cracks and now they are getting old and some just can't be fixed
Hi, I've got TC-K461S (similar mechanism but not autoreverse) with the same problem: when it goes from play to stop it unrol a bit of the tape inside the cassette. No one has figured out what the problem might be and believe me, there were many specialists ... But when I saw this video, I checked the plastic gear and Jesus Christ .... it was cracked. I glued the gear and no matter what I did, when I tried to put on the motor axe it cracks again an again. I glued last time and I made the gear hole a little bit larger and glued on the motor shaft and bang! it worked. The problem disapeared. Thank you man! You're the man! I never saw a video more comprehensive than this! Everything you showed here is correct! I will subscribe imediately! Have a nice life! Thank you!
I'll do what you said. Mine is cracked and I glued it but the deck still becomes berserk when the tape comes to its end, then tries to eat the tape rewinding it very fast at the opposite direction. Finally, the mechanism gets stuck until I disconnect the unit from electricity. Some minutes later I reconnect the unit and the mechanism gets ok again. Edit: I interchanged the less damaged gear from the reproduction side to the recording side and now it's working finely. Excellent tip, sir. Thank you.
I have this exact deck and it's not working right now and I thought for sure I would NOT find anything on how to fix it but lo and behold I find probably the most detailed repair video for something 30 years old. thanks
Nice work, that was a tough one. At least the owner should be able to get a few more years out of this deck.
Wow a nice long video - from JP - I admire your patience and persistence with this one.
Great seeing the cracked gear. I've pinned cracked sony gears before and had great success, but now I know there's a proper replacement I'll check that out. All the symptoms you describe are right on the money.
Wagner in australia sell rollers and I'm sure there's other places. I've gotten good W&F results using the wagner ones.
I've seen corrosion on sony capstans and have sucessfully buffed it out with brasso. The only downside is the the capstan ends up thinner and it reduces the speed ever so slightly on that side.
The erratic behavior is probably the deal breaker here. Sony mode control operates by reversing the reel motor for carefully timed periods. Any friction or slippage throws it out.
One thing people need to understand is that all this mid-price hi-fi material (being Sony, Pioneer or Technics, doesn't matter) was all made to last 5 or 6 years with a 'regular' use... And this is valid to any type, VCR, CD players, any thing with mobile parts... In case you're thinking about buying a Video-8 camera don't even think about it - all SMD caps are spewing corrosive liquid, unless someone changed them at some point, you'll end up with a worthless brick, no matter what the eBay seller tells you... Even amplifiers, they all suffer from cold solder joints, dirty pots, you name it...
UPDATE: I'm the owner of this deck and Jordan did a fantastic job!, still playing like a champ!. Thank you Jordan!!!!
Thanks for the vid. I learned a lot about those monsters. The crack on that devilish gear was the culprit. Finally I repaired the recording side of my Sony deck.
You have the patience of a saint .I would have taken a hammer to that 😂😂
i would've pried the door off with a butter knife and THEN taken a hammer to it
Wow that was some detailed work. Thanks for taking the time. So if I see a 90's tape deck I should just forget about it.
35 minutes in you rub the surface of the pinch-roller with 1000 grit paper. When I was a TV/VCR engineer we used to use a product called spirit of soap which rejuvenated the rubber of pinch rollers in Video recorders.
I was waiting for you to find bad caps!
I hope you were well paid for repairing that deck, If it were mine I would have scrapped it due to how many faults it had.
Probably a lot cheaper to find a decent used deck!
A service technician makes basic mistakes. The pressure rollers are replaced with new ones, and not regenerated. Rubber has long lost its properties.
I couldn't see how the Lord treated the Capstan roller with a scalpel, it was enough to take it out and soak it in alcohol or plain water. After soaking, the dirt would come off nicely.
Am messing with a Panasonic Su CH40 since yesterday and is proving to be a nightmare.
Please make a video on cleaning the entire cassette mechanism on Panasonic Double Cassette deck. Thanks.
Last but not least, please avoid using sandpaper for cleaning pinch rollers. Use detergent, soak em for a while and use a toothbrush to clean them.
I have used this technique and works amazing 👍
Maybe you can find and order some replacements on Aliexpress. I don't know the quality of these rollers but hey, at least you can try it. Scraping dirt off on sandpaper (the way you did this) of pinch rollers is never a good idea. Better keep the pinch roller in it's place, let it turn and use some sandpaper on a piece of flat wood/metal/plastic (on fixed position) to create a equal flat surface to scrape off. Of course better is to replace it with new ones. Scraping the capstan with a knife..... never do this. Try silver polish to clean it up and after that rinse it with alcohol. Demagnetize every metal part when finished.
The plastic stopper is not the head assy height stopper. The height stopper is in the right pinchroller on the round rod that comes in place between the head assy and the plastic rest for that plastic rod on the right pinch roller assy. Use a piece of heatshrink on the plastic rod and you are done.
Do you have a picture of this as I have the same issue now after I changed the motor gear
If this were my deck, I'd probably combine the best mechanical parts in one deck and not use the other deck anymore. Shame because this looks like it was once a really nice unit.
As for those broken gears: There are several injection molding places in Southern California who accept custom orders. At the DCC Museum, we've been wondering how difficult (and expensive) it would be to get some gears for DCC recorders commercially reproduced. They fail in the same way, though not with dramatic side effects like reversing a reel or something.
Thanks for posting!
just watched your video again while I was watching it - iwas checking the transports for that deck even the little gear that crackes is not cracked pinch rollers look like never have tape on them heads new I pyt belts on them put 9-volt battery on motor run perfect without hooking up whole deck I think these 4 transports are the BEST you can find date on motor 1-27-97 -in box all assembled ready to go belts and all -belts might be off bet they run
Has always I Liked,shared. All my best.
great work there...nice try and explanation video
I got one of these things and I for the life of me cannot figure out how to fix this thing. The capstan motors both works completely fine but the reel motors or the secondary function motor is completely dead almost. I have the poor deck torn almost to shreds trying to figure out as it's like there is a loose contact somewhere and it's not like it's one singular bad motor when one motor starts working the other motor works and the deck works fine and it cycles through everything but then when I go to restart it nothing. Dead. I have looked at every single connection and I found it starts working if I mess with the tape transports themselves by applying pressure downward or at an angle from the top, I have some success getting it to work but I doesn't fix it %100 at all. Out of all the decks I've worked on this thing absolutely has me stumped. all solder connections are fine, and all connections are good as well. What happens is when you put a tape in, and press play the capstan motor kicks on and spins but the reel motor absolutely NOTHING. Almost as if it were unplugged but I made sure it wasn't. The little gears that you were talking about are both fine and look to be in pristine condition and just to make sure they weren't the problem I took them off and same result. ANY help on fixing this would be greatly appreciated as I now have zero clue where to go now and I really would hate to throw away such a nice deck as it is in great cosmetic shape.
Que modelo es?
The tape deck from hell !
Those pinchrollers look like the ones from Panasonic slimline cassette recorders.
14:50 small gear cracked
17:18 detected switches
27:14 again small gear cracked
22:03 pinch rollers
51:18 piece of plastic, head alignment
I wonder why all those late 90's dual well machines end up in the land fill? Thrown out a denon and technics this year seems they engineer to completely fail. Well my 70s and early 80s stuff are a running. Your superior skill with this stuff is obvious.
I got my gears from the us, from a guy called "k_o_stereo" on ebay for around 11$ shipped...he will give you extra ones because they are so tight they might break while installing...but are fine after install is complete...they work...and he guarantees them to correct this problem.
Then, they are either too tight, or too weak. I used to bore up the hole in them to get a loose fit, and glue them on the motor shaft with gel-type superglue.
Do you know? are the pinch rollers in the tc-818m the same as the rollers in the tc-h500?
hi i had alot opf betacam sp decks down to the last 2 decks they all done now finding parts is a right pain
i have put in 100's of hrs fixing decks of many kinds i understand where you are soming from
funny thing i have alot RS 101 decks all running ace run of a hi- fi amp my one's run of a big 12v 0 12v ac power unit
they are not liked one bit Technics RS-X101 picked alot up in the uk low cost just to play with
What is the size of the flat belt and square belt of Sony TC-WR820?
Flat belt is an FRW-8.5
square belt is an scx-2.6
BUY ONLY THESE BELTS, AND BUY THRM ONLY FROM RUSSELL INDUSTRIES
Those Sony pinch rollers, identifiable by the very small inner plastic hub, are utter junk. They must be replaced on sight with improved types to avoid weird skewing and wow problems.
hi the tascam 238 is the same hell deck i have one playing only at 3 speed yes 3 speeds i have a reel to reel 1/8 tape deck
EMI BTR 4 so i can record all on the deck first i can tell you best way in real time 8 1/4 basf spools tes fixing cassette decks
is a right pain
The white spindle in the pinch rollers were all over the place.
Dress making pins might be better for end stops.
The owner was willing to spend all that money? Your willingness to fix it was another story. I would have walked away from it.
What do you think of the Sony "ES" version of Sony Audio Components? Are they as well built as they say.
Some are, most are just regular components with fancy features and badging
@@mikec9112 Is the tc-wr875 a bad deck?
Thank you
I have one with motorized doors and it turns on but the doors won’t open
It's jammed. Don't force it open or you're tossing the deck in the trash.
Gotta reset the cams then open
@@JordanPier where are those cams? I have the same problem on the right side deck
@@aristo698 the cam is the large wheel with gear teeth and lobes on it. There's an arm with a follower on it. To trigger the cycle you have to push on the release slide on the right side of the transport as seen from the front. The cam rotates counter clockwise as seen from the rear.
Also, on the ones with motorized doors it's far more tricky. There are two sets of gears. One for the functions and one for the doors. The function cam has to be reset before you can open the doors. Hard to explain.
Hello friend, what belts size did you install?
Frw-8.5 for the capstans, scx-2.6 for the reel motor
@@JordanPier thank you very much Jordan🤝
This mechanism is the worst from Sony and the pinch rollers too. That combo was used in most of the Sony decks in the `90 (even in 3 head models!) so go figure about their quality. The wow&flutter numbers are not great even with good belt and pinch roller due to the low weight of the flywheel
Well, one flywheel is made of metal, the other one I don't know what material is but it looks like alloy
- There are many versions of the TCM-190 transport, one is particularly problematic. In those ones, the capstan bearing has a plastic housing, and it cracks, just like the reel motor gear. After that, the bearing will move as the pinch roller pushes the capstan shaft. No more 120 tape in such deck, it will crumble the edge of it, and it might cause azimuth stability issues even with 90 tapes. Until the bearing housing is not cracked, the bearing should be extracted and the hole in the housing should be bored up to a higher diameter for a less tight fit. I have a TC-K511S (3 head), a TC-K461S and several TC-K311 with this issue, I bought several TC-W320 double decks for donors.
- They are not that bad, if you catch them the right time and make the necessary maintenance/mods to prevent things cracking. The reel motor gear started to crack in my TC-K511S when I bought it, but the crack has not reached the teeth yet, so I cleaned the crack with IPA, put a dab of superglue in it, and quickly removed the gear from the shaft, so the crack could close itself ( I helped it a bit with a pair of pliers). After the glue set, I bored up the hole in the gear to be a loose fit on the shaft (but without play), and glued it onto the shaft with gel-type superglue. This was 3 years ago, still perfect. I would not do this with a fully cracked gear, but if you catch it when it is just partially cracked, and not between the teeth, it can be saved. Always bore up the hole, even if there is no sign of crack on these gears. It will crack eventually if you don't decrease the tension in it by boring up the hole. I used to use a drill bit held in a vise, and I rotate the gear on it by hand very carefully. I can't remember the right drill diameter though, I hope I took notes...
- Yes, their pinch rollers and belts from the '90s are horrible, they failed when they were less than 20 years old. I have many Sony cassette decks, even from 1977 (TC-K2A), with their original pinch rollers still being perfect today! But not a single TCM-190 mech deck I could find with a usable pinch roller.
- Wow & flutter: It can be as low as 0.07% with the composite plastic flywheel, but it is very picky on belts and pinch rollers. You must use the absolute best quality capstan belt and pinch rollers in order to get close to this factory spec. Note that the original belt is like 0.3mm (or so) thick, the replacements are usually much thicker, and it makes a huge difference in the wow&flutter. You need a very even, and very thin belt. Some models use proper metal flywheels, like the TC-KE500S, with 0.055% W&F, and these with the metal flywheel are probably less picky on belts. I recently bought a dead TC-K711S, which has the dual capstan and three motor version of the TCM-190, the TCM-200. The bearing housings are brass, and the flywheels are proper, balanced aluminium ones. The low-end TC-W320 double deck also has aluminium flywheels, but those are unbalanced, so it usually gives slightly worse W&F figures than the plastic ones (factory spec is 0.08% for the metal flywheel TC-W320, and 0.07% for the plastic flywhell TC-K511S)
@@mrnmrn1 For the gear-split problem I made metall rings for this gears. No matter if they are already broken or not, I always put such a metall ring onto the gear-shaft and they never ever will break again so to speak. And for the pinch roller I found good ones with a brass core. I modify them to fit into the TCM-190 pinch-roller holders and they work perfectly.
And after a complete disassemble, cleaning and re-oiling/greasing the mechanism, it works even smoother as a new one. Make a good service prevents putting the mechanism 6 times in and out. So in the end it will save time.
@@matthiash.4670 I saw others putting metal rings on those gears, yes, it helps preventing the gear from cracking and become loose on the shaft. BUT it won't prevent cracking from the other side, in between the teeth. And that is even worse, because normally, such a cracked gear will be loose on the shaft and the deck won't work, but with the metal ring, it will turn, but the teeth spacing will be wider where the crack is. The owner should notice the transport runs awfully loud, but if this sign is ignored, the cracked gear will damage the other gear connecting to it, which is much harder to get.
@@mrnmrn1 no, the rings I made fit perfectly. By putting the gear back on the shaft there is no visible crack anymore and the mechanism sounds like a new one. The ring has to be manufactured with very tight tolerance. More than a dozen now got modified by me that way, none of them get failed.
And even if there might be a slight gap between two teeth, it is way better than just glueing the gear on the shaft with a giant gap. And that's the normal way of doing this repair today. Which is the most possible bad way.
Link for the Ebay store please, i can"t find it. Sillicone mind, mine ?
www.ebay.com/itm/254408524871
@@JordanPier Thanks a lot.
Where do you buy the oiler syringe?
Thank you.
Dang is this thing really worth all that? I’ve seen an awful lot of dual cassette decks almost given away for free.
Seems like cassettes are making a bit of a comeback and people are asking money for the decks again which might make this repair sort of worth it.
Over the last few years I bought quite a few cassettes at various shows. For $5 it was a good way to support the band and cool for nostalgia factor. They also came with a download card so you could listen to the music without using the tape. I do have a nice Yamaha deck but it hasn't come out of it's box in years.
Jim Kresky I have a nice cassette deck and several tapes as well. I have seen a slight increase in the value recently but nothing to make it worth this much trouble to repair yet. JP has way more patience with this thing than I would have haha
@@bugdrvr That's what i been hearing that they are making a comeback
Cheers
Most 1990s tape decks were not that great. They had become an afterthought by that time, even Sony.
I know about these I never fixed mine either worst sony made need those ribbins for Christmas pkgs
hi there is pinch rollers for this you need alot of money
i bought a 3d printer to make replacement gears etc for ced players, betamax, vhs and cassette decks
Send me your info. I have fed and betamax machines that may need your services in the future
vintageavrepair at gmail dot com
@@JordanPier I have the tc-wr875
Does it have the same transport mech as the one in the video?
On mine the problem is the cassette doors don't want to open.
Another excellent video!
Cheers
@@JordanPier You need some sort of tripod for your camera to make things easier on you when filming so you don't have to do it one handed.
@@JordanPier I hope my tc-875 wont be so hard to work on as this one.
Good stuff for a video at least but what a pile
your shop is a mess - clean that gear up - nasty
if you want 4 complete transports for this deck I have them in much better shape than yours just sitting in my room I can send you everything just postage that is all from cathedral city ca
I can use the parts. Inbox me vintageavrepair at gmail dot com
Hey Walter, if you want you can send the transports to me and I'll send them to Jordan. email me at saranactrl@gmail.com . if he use them I'll compensate you for them. Thanks.
email me i have a lot of items for you 95-percent discount almost free @@Android_Warrior
@@waltercarpenito1737 what's your email?
This is the very reason I don't work in electronics. tapedecks. gad.. gag.. hell. no.
It's a Sony. Lol.
Am messing with a Panasonic Su CH40 since yesterday and is proving to be a nightmare.
Please make a video on cleaning the entire cassette mechanism on Panasonic Double Cassette deck. Thanks.
Last but not least, please avoid using sandpaper for cleaning pinch rollers. Use detergent, soak em for a while and use a toothbrush to clean them.
I have used this technique and works amazing 👍