today we're going to be looking at how audio cassette player mechanism works running through the basic parts how it operates and how to fix it as well which obviously is a lot easier once you understand which part is which now they come in two basic Arrangements you have your portable stereo type one where the buttons are on top of the unit and the door is on the front and at front loads the heads are actually on the top tape loads into the door upside down and into the mechanism like that and they also make what is basically the same mechanism the other way around it'll just have different type of buttons on it such as this one this is out of a silver unit from the 80s so we'll brand that is and it's basically the same thing but the buttons operate by pressing down on them and the cassette mounts in an upright position most stereo high-five decks and like this some portable stereos with a dual rope and you put your tape down into it the bottom down and then shut the door which would put it in that position so these earlier 80's 70's and 80's cassette players just about every mechanism is made for that particular model or that particular brands so they're all different in their construction you know the motors are often the same sort of part used between different brands but I'm each deck each mechanism all the parts and it'll generally be incompatible with anything else into the nineties this is one of the nineties style decks that kept going right through the nineties and even later that's basically only two of these sort of generic mechanisms used in a lot of basically portable stereo shelf systems that sort of thing some hi-fi decks as well and that's this one with this little auto stop lever that moves up and down here and there's also another one which I haven't got but I think it had some sort of a middle that came up here with a little angled off piece which was also for the auto stop I'm not sure if these four Chinese made or where they're made but most of the later players use one or other of those two types of decks the only difference with them is depending which way around they're mounted they would put a set of buttons on them coming outwards it was a front-loading tape bottom down first or if it was an upside down mechanism with the buttons at the top and a portable stereo the buttons sticking at the top they had these straight little lever fittings to put the buttons on but that was about all that varied between them again using fairly generic motors the only real difference with these motors which is usual labelled on them this one's a nine volt DC they also come in six and twelve volt is about only ones you normally see there's a CCW here on the label which means counterclockwise they also come in a clockwise version CW they usually have a part number on them or this is an eg 530 a d9 BT it's also says that it's 2400 rpm which is the standard speed I believe most murders of that speed for just a single speed deck you also get they just have a positive and negative terminal on them you also get a 4 terminal version which has a secondary speed which is something like double that 4800 or something as well as 2400 that's used in duel dubbing tape decks for the high speed dubbing but most images have these two terminals these later ones have a lock you can see a bit of circuit board sticking out with the terminals there is an electronic controller in here and there's a little that little hole there which has a usually a bit of black foamy stuff over it that's actually a trim pot to adjust the speed of the motor some of the earlier motors such as this one the wire just comes straight out of it it's also got a trim pot to adjust it you can actually see that one in there doesn't seem to have a cover this is 12 volt DC again 2400 counterclockwise eg5 110 EDD to be the are common in a lot of the earlier units yeah the one in the silver deck that's one of the slightly later looking ones it's got the circuit board EG 589 be again nine volts 2400 counterclockwise so I think the counterclockwise were the common ones but some do have a clockwise motor in them so you need to check that if you ever need to replace a motor now have a look at some of the main main parts in these tape decks and what they do now you obviously have your two reels the supply one is it's called and they take up one so when you put your cassette in here that comes through the two holes in the cassette the supply reel was basically the one that you rewind on to and it also supplies the tape as it plays from the left to the right side here and the take-up reel is one that takes up the tape after it's played now in rewind and fast-forward the motor goes via a little idler assembly here little gear assembly or it can be a rubber tire and in rewind the modal pretty much directly just drive this supply reel and in a reverse direction clockwise direction and none of our heads or anything will be engaged in fast forward it'll swing across and engage with a take-up reel which will go in an anti-clockwise direction and that's all that's powering the tape when it's fast forwarding or rewinding but when we're actually in play this supply reel just sits here and spins and doesn't do anything the take-up reel does run but it's not actually what's pulling the tape through when we go into play we actually have the heads which are these two things here race head playback head they actually move up into the bottom of the tape case here so that's the heads they're sitting below and the pin troll on here sitting below the tape when we press play actually goes up inside the tape slightly pushes against the little little spring felt in there which actually helps push the tape on to the heads up and read it get the signor foot and the pinch roller engages with the capstan which is a shaft which goes up through this hole on the tape metal shaft here and it's actually the tape being squeezed between the pinch roller and the capstan which actually pulls the tape through when we're in play mode so that sets the speed and does all the pulling the take-up reel well here we'll also turn but that's only to basically once the tape comes out of being pinched between the pinch roller and the capstan it'll just start coming out like you get when you a tape choose if it just basically comes out of the roll and it's loose so this has to wind it back inside the case but this has really nothing to do with the actual playback speed or anything like that it's merely just pulling the tape back into the case so we don't get a chewed tape situation so now I have a look at some of the parts removed from a tape deck we have our race head this just has two wires connected to it you can see the little ferrite facing it there the rest of us just a plastic casing and basically these are just fed these are on the left hand side of the playback head here and as the tape goes from left to right spool if you're in record mode this will be fed an AC bias signal which will basically erase the old signal off the tape before it gets across to our playback head now this is just a playback head your normal stereo one just basically for connections to us and two signals left and right channel and a couple of mounting tabs a little bit of tape got on the end here and basically again the ferrite face of the little pickup part of the head there generally these pretty well last for a long for the life of the tape deck you may have to give them a clean occasionally if there's any sort of orangey brown tape ferrite oxide that builds up on there the only other thing that really goes wrong with them is an actual groove can be worn into the face of them if they've had awful lot of use the head will actually wear but generally they last pretty well same with the erase head very rare for anything to go wrong with them it is possible to have set the alarm on this which will look out later but generally it's very rare you ever need to replace a tape head it's basically just a couple of calls a wire in there and we can just check these with a multimeter set to continuity if you are missing a channel or anything like that if you have any suspicions that there's something wrong with one of these heads but very rare it will happen we can just there's your race head just across the two pins continuity i'd say red and it looks like the red wires are probably our signal and and white is our earth so this is not quite as lower resistance even though it is just a quarter wire got about 200 ohms 200 ohms and the other one exact connectors so across these two pins there's basically just a coil of wire in there and we should get continuity very rare that you ever find a heads going to open circuit or anything like that these are generally very reliable and outlived the life of the cassette deck some of the other important parts we have our capstan this is what it looks like removed from the deck it has this large flywheel on it I guess help regulate the speed keep it constant and this shaft that comes up this is usually men on the back of the deck a motor here it's got this pulley on it there will be a belt when these rubber belts rubber bands or some people want to call them either a square section or a flat section belt which will basically go from our motor pulley across to our capstan there's a slot on the back of this some sort of arrangement like that depending which way around the motor is and the motor will drive that sometimes it'll have the flat belt which will go right around the face of it and this is what regulates our speed and pull to take through in playback mode we have this little pinch roller here just a little rubber wheel mounted on a bracket that pivots back and forth so it engages and disengages with this pin on the actual capstan itself so that'll engage and disengage with that caps and shaft there's usually a big spring on this as well which also when the tape deck comes up with the spring or pushes hard against the capstan ii sometimes cause problems but generally as the capstan rotates the pinch roller sits against it and that will rotate as well pulling the tape through so it's the pressure of these two things together that pulls the tape for in the play mode off this often be another belt which will run to this other assembly known as the idler now this bit swings back and forwards between our two reels so they take up the supply reels one one two pull the tape in the forward direction or the fast-forward or play and want to pull it in the reverse direction and this idle tight idler assembly will have a belt on the back of it on this pulley so rub a bill to go around that usually back to the capstan sometimes is one built around the capstan and the idler pulley just depends on the way they set the deck up so this this will this is fairly basically directly driven by belt from the motor and this will run out fast forward and rewind operations depending which button you press it'll swing back and forwards and connect with either your supply or take-up reel some of them also will have this little rubber wheel this is our play I love this this actually runs on a different lever and this is only operated on to the take-up reel so it only ever pushes against that it can't swing back to the reverse one unless we've got some sort of auto reverse dick or something may may actually have a oiler that swings between the two but on just a normal deck non auto reverse one this will just swing across so on the older ones this is just a plastic body and it's got this little rubber tire on it which is following the bits on this one common problem for chewing tapes will be that this little rubber wheel will be worn out they can be quite hard to get these days so you may have to find a way of substituting something like an o-ring or something for that if you if you can't get an a replacement anymore but the later Dex did away with this it's just gear driven but all the early Dex often have one or more wheels rubber wheels involved in this which will perish with time so that's sort of the main parts of the deck and how they work there's also a little leaf switch mounted on the back so when the mechanisms pressed a barrel slide across in play fast water and rewind to press on this switch which then gives voltage to operate the motor and get that going so if the motors not running at all it can be something to do with this switch or the lever that pushes on it able to tape decks also here tape counter just a little mechanical counter which as we spin it around it it counts to go on the wrong way but anyway it counts upwards to give you an idea where in the tape you are which is handy if you're recording and stuff and you want to go back to a certain place and it's got a reset button to go back to zero this is also driven off a couple of belts often that'll go back to our take-up reel usually however build-off they're off this little groove underneath there and that'll run that in some of the older decks this will also have a magnet and a reed switch or magnet and Hall effect sensor or something like that, and if the belt fails between the take-up and our tape counter, and the tape counter stops running, often that'll work as an auto stop, and if the belt actually fails it'll sense that the rotation stopped and go into auto stop, even though the tape still running fine, just because the build is slipping or broken, so that's another thing to look out for, if you've got a tape deck that runs for a second or two and then goes into auto stop, that can be - usually a belt that feeds the counter and the counter will have - on the more expensive units - will have some sort of speed sensor or rotation sensor, and if that stops rotating, that'll activate the electronics to turn the - usually using a solenoid or something - to actually turn the deck off and put it back in the stop mode. So here we have the complete deck with all those pieces together, we have our erase head on the left - two wires, a play record head - which is usually mounted - well always mounted in the middle I think, if it's an auto reverse type deck you actually have double the - this little dark part you can see in there, it'll have two of those that'll be right across the face of it, usually car cassette players are like that because they just change the direction of the tape, some of the hi-fi or shelf system ghettoblaster type auto-reversers, you actually have a gear on the bottom of this head, and it will actually rotate the head around. It'll just be a normal stereo head and they'll actually rotate it - use a mechanism to rotate it, but you won't find that on these basic sort of generic decks. So in Stop mode, basically nothing rotates here you can see our Idler Wheel turning, our Capstan turning, but the Switch on the back will be disengaged so the Motor won't turn at all when you're in Stop. If we engage Rewind you'll see this Idler here has will move across and that will engage so when the Motor turns it also hit the - it'll press the switch in, except this wants to auto stop, the Motor will start and I'll start turning the the supply reel in Reverse, in - which is the clockwise direction, that's actually pulling tape backwards, there goes our auto stop. If we go to Fast-Forward, the reel - the Idler will flick across to the other side to the side, to the take-up reel, and that'll turn in anti clockwise direction and pull the tape the other direction. So in the forward direction. Now once we go into Play mode all the heads will engage, and the pinch roller, has to come up and press on the Capstan here, so we press Play, our Heads move up, this whole plate moves up, our pinch roller is now engaged, I say, the pinch roller will turn, if we turn - I'm turning the capstan on the back here like the motor would. The pinch roller should engage and turn, our take-up reel will also turn, but it's not turning via this idler, the idler is just sitting in the middle disengaged now. This one's actually got a separate gear here, because in play mode it'll run at a lower speed, we don't want it running at fast forward speed, we just want this to take up the slack tape after it's been pulled through by the capstan and pinch roller. If we press our Pause button that'll actually make the pinch roller drop back, so it disengages from pulling the tape through because it's no longer touching the Capstan, the Capstan will keep spinning, but that's just brushing against the tape basically, it doesn't do anything, and you'll also see that our take-up reel has disengaged as well, so basically this this little gear here which is driving our take-up reel in playback, will just fall back and disengage along with the Pinch roller, when we take that off again our pinch roller will re-engage, our take-up reel drive will also re-engage. Now the actual Pause button itself, as you can see - this lever moving up and down, it's got a little mechanism, little plastic piece, can't really see it under the motor there, but it's got a little latching piece there, a little plastic bit, that will hold it in place. Sometimes those - they're held on by these little - a little white plastic clip with a spring under it. Sometimes those crack and will pop off, the spring will pop that plastic bit off and you'll find - if the pause isn't working - you may find that little plastic round clip there plus the spring floating around inside the mechanism. Sometimes also the little latching plastic piece there will fall out as well. Sometimes also the little part in that plastic, there's a little piece in the middle which holds the pause button down that'll actually wear out or break off, and even though the parts are in place it just won't latch the pause button down. Hit Stop again and everything disengages. The only other button is our Record button here. Now the Record button is connected to this lever here, which corresponds with the hole on the top of the tape here, or if it has a hole. If it's a pre-recorded tape that tab will be missing, and that means that this lever doesn't get pushed, which means you cannot - you try and push your play record down - you cannot do it, whereas if we have a tape like this which has a tab in it, this is a a blank tape - purchased as a blink tape - then that will actually push this lever up, which will lift it up off this lever and we can then engage our play and record buttons together. In this mode its basically - everything's the same as being in Playback. We have our Pinch roller engaged, our take-up reel running slowly, our heads engaged, but the only difference is, this will - there is a mechanical lever on the back, this can be a wire lever, this ones just a right angle piece of metal, but they will push on an actual play record switch on the circuit board in the tape deck, so that is the main difference, which will then electrically connect the heads up differently, it'll get the erase head erasing, give that a bias signal, and obviously the playback head will then be getting a signal in it to record rather than to playback. But mechanically record is basically the same thing, other than it presses an electrical switch, and also you are stopped from actuating by a record protect lever there. So put our tape in, press Play, Heads go up, pinch roller engages. If I wind the Capstan you can actually see the tape moving. If we actually - I'm not sure - this will probably try and disengage. If we stop this take-up reel from engaging, then the pinch roller will will still keep turning, and that will cause a tape chew because the tape will go through the pinch roller where it's pressed against the capstan and start coming out the back of the pinch roller. Sometimes it will follow - it will stick to the pinch roller and follow it round, and then get all jammed up in the mechanism. So if you have a chewing tape issue it means your pinch rollers working - and capstan, they're pulling the tape through, but this Take-up Reel has stopped rotating and pulling the tape back into the case, so that's what causes that. In Record mode because this has got a tab in, and the records disengaged, it's exactly the same thing - mechanism operates mechanically identically, but there's - there would be a switch pressed inside the - on the circuit board of the actual unit, or sometimes it's a mechanical lever that pulls on the switch, and that changes all the electrical signals going to the heads, and basically starts erasing the tape as it comes past your erase head, off the supply reel, and then a blank piece of tape will get to the record head - as it now is - the record playback head, and that'll write a new signal onto the tape for you and record that there. Here is our older style mechanism, 1980s Silver boom box, and it's basically the same operation - the buttons just operate on a slightly different principle because they're sticking out the front in this case, but you can see that lifts up our head,s that's the play button, connects our pinch roller to our capstan shaft, and this little idler - little rubber idler tyre in this one - comes across, and our supply - our Take-Up Reel starts rotating to pull the tape back into the case - that's the Stop button, we've got another mechanical geared idler here, that when we're going to rewind, that pulls across to the supply reel. When you press fast-forward it swings back across to the take-up reel. I'm gonna press stop it just sits here and does nothing. When we press play - it is actually connected I think in this case, so it is actually running the play idler, so some - in some cases, the play idler will run just off this little protruding, much smaller diameter part, which will reduce the speed. But that's basically how it works. We've also got this eject lever here, that's what opens your door sometimes - they usually sprung like this, when we press the stop button a second time, that'll Eject, and the spring on the door will push the door open. Sometimes you'll get some trouble with these - will jam, the spring may break off so they don't return - so the door stays open and when you're trying to shut it it doesn't stay shut. Sometime something will go wrong you wont be able to open the door, because when you press on this it doesn't lift this part, so that's another thing that can go wrong, but this is - this mechanism is very much the same as the other one, except we have a single beltt in this one that comes off the pulley - pulley on the motor, round our capstan, round our idler, which you can see can swing within that belt, in pulling on the belt a bit, and then back onto the motor, so it's just a loop around, whereas our other one here, we have a belt loops around just the capstan and then we have a second belt from the - another little pulley on the capstan below there, which comes across to our idler, so there's there's multiple different ways they set these belts up, but if either of these belts break, if the one going to the motor breaks then you'll find you have nothing on the tape deck will actually operate, we can mechanically put it in place but it won't rewind fast-forward or do anything. If this secondary belt breaks you'll usually lose rewind and fast-forward but play may still work, or depending on the design it may actually chew tapes because it the take up reel will no longer take up, but the the capstan will still run and the pinch roller, so you'll get those rotating, but not this, and that is a common cause for chewed tapes. About the only other thing we haven't covered on these is the auto stop. This particular type of 90s mechanism, which is one of the generic ones used in lots of different brands, and basically replaced many, except for the high-end brands, all the decks were either this one or the slight variant of it. So we have this auto stop piece here that as, as the reel turns, it actually pivots up and down slightly on this eccentric center of this gear here, and as long as this reel's turning, there is a little piece mounted on here, a double-ended little piece, it can swing either way - as long as that's pressing down with a little bit of pressure because the reel is turning, that'll stop the auto stop engaging, but as soon as we stop this, or nearly as soon as we do, actually we got to stop the gear - do we have to stop the gear? - no. Its gonna make a liar of me, it's not engaging Oh there it goes. So it usually happens quite a bit quicker than that. And same if we're going to rewind without this supply reel - the take-up reel operating, it'll soon go into auto stop. In fast-forward - again we have to stop this center piece - and you can see it click there a bit, but it hasn't taken it out yet. Once it does a full revolution - yeah I think it actually has, it just hasn't slid back properly. So in Play mode - again if this this part stops turning, within a revolution of this it should, basically the, this mechanism will flick something and unlatch the main mechanism. So the heads will come back, Pinch Roller will disengage, the switch will open, and then the motor will stop. Probably one more, one other thing we should cover, is there is a bit of a clutch here in this - this is the Fast Forward and rewind idler which feeds this gear, and under this piece here, on the back where the belt goes on, there's a little felt pad, so there is a bit of a clutch in there so that when the tape hits the end, before the auto - auto stop actually kicks in, or if you've got a bad tape that's jammed up or something, there is a little bit of slippage allowed between the belt running this outer piece, and the gear on this inner one, so if that suddenly comes to a screeching halt at the end of the tape just before that kicks in that all allow the the motor, the clutch will slip so you won't break it tape or anything like that. Occasionally these - you'll get problems with these clutches, sometimes they're just worn out, but it takes a lot of use normally for that to happen, sometimes this gear which is on a middle pin will split, the plastic will crack and that'll become loose and won't, it's not attached to the pin anymore, so that'll just slip instead of driving anything. If people have put oil or grease or like a lubricant, RP7 or something like that into the unit and it gets on that clutch pad which is like a felt pad in there that'll slip and that can ruin the clutch, so that can be another problem if you're fast forward or rewind's slow or not operating, or doesn't get to the end of the tape, it can be that clutch slipping long before it should because it's just not enough friction there because someone's lubricated it, or it's worn or your little gears split, something like that. The auto stop mechanisms occasionally you'll get something wrong with those, a spring that pulls this unit will unhook or something or break, they're generally pretty reliable, but sometimes you will have to try and work out how this unit works, if you're getting auto stop occurring all the time, basically press play and within a revolution of the reel the the deck just cuts off again, but generally fairly reliable. Sometimes you'll get faults with these, these slide bars. There's a whole bunch of sliding bits that go sideways as well as these levers that go up and down. You can probably see some up through the holes in the chassis there, they're all hidden, hidden under this plastic part, and the heads, but they can sometimes cause trouble sometime because someone's bent something here, maybe one of the little levers sticking up like the one that presses on the switch is bent and it's not pressing the switch. It's generally pretty reliable - those parts. Sometimes they can - you know - if they haven't been used for a very long time, and it's an old deck, they might need lubrication. There is a bit of grease on some of these, but generally never go and put lubrication of any sort all over a tape deck, it's the best way to ruin them. If you can apply it in areas where there is grease, or there is oil on some of the little bearings and stuff on, like on the Capstan, on the Reels, but don't just put lubricant all over everything thinking it will fix it, because it'll probably ruin the deck. You may need to lubricate some of these things,. If it's really old it may even need some sort of lubricant spraying in there, very, very sparingly and cautiously, just to loosen things up again. Sometimes there's things like these springs here on a little plastic mount, the plastic mount will break, so always check for Springs that are not sitting right or if they've fallen out and in the bottom of the unit somewhere, they can cause problems, because a lot of them are sitting on plastic and stuff that will break. If you get really desperate you can take these screws out on the back here on these newer decks, and probably on most decks, and actually remove this whole head unit. You'll probably have to take the pinch roller off and possibly the capstan and a few - and this auto stop and stuff, but they are a real pain to work on. With these later generic decks - yeah - if it had a problem in the in the mechanism that wasn't something obvious, I'd just find another second-hand deck out of another unit, preferably one that hasn't had much use, and it's been written off for other reasons, and just swap the whole deck over. You'll probably have to put the original motor back in it, and sometimes the original heads, just unscrew them and leave them because they're on the original wiring or whatever, but you could actually just change the hold deck over cause it can be a real pain - once you pull that to bits it's very hard to to see what's actually faulty for starters, and very hard to get everything back together again, often everything's loose in there you've got to try and keep everything in place and then it engages with all sorts of different things here and yeah, very hard to get it all working again, so generally wouldn't recommend pulling that to bits. Some of these earlier decks are much simpler, you can see everything. The whole play part is on the front here, all slides up and down, but it's just one unit. Springs are obvious, what it does is obvious, on the back here there's very little as well, just a few bits that slide up and down, and then this latching plate, that as you press each button, this will come across and just lock the button in. When you press the stop button that just slides back and everything falls back into place. So these are quite easy to work on, some of these old ones if you ever need to fix the mechanics in them, but generally they're very reliable other than problems with your idler tires, belts, sometimes pinch rollers not engaging properly, that sort of thing, eject mechanism not working properly, but generally they're pretty reliable. Now when the unit is put in a record - I was talking about a record playback switch - it's usually mounted on the circuit board somewhere, it's this big long silver thing here, which usually have these white or black plastic ends. If we press on that it slides back and forwards. So normally they - just in play - that just sits in the resting position, the internal spring pushes it to one end. When we press record there'll be some sort of mechanical linkage or lever will push that across, and that will then kick in all this electronics to rewire the heads to become record instead of play, there'll be some sort of little oscillator here with one of these coils usually, that does your erase head, puts an AC signal into that so it becomes basically a demagnetiser of the tape signal, just puts a random magnetic pattern there in place of whatever was recorded on it before. Now these do cause problems, usually the the tape deck will be pressing on it alright, but sometimes when you've got absolutely no playback sound, or no record sound, or it could be one channel missing, one channel intermittent, the actual contacts in these do get dust and dirt in there, especially if they haven't been used much, so what you'd normally do is get something like a can of this Switch Cleaner Lubricant, and basically go in on the ends, and the hole in the middle make sure it all comes bubbling out nicely, and give a good good dose of Switch Cleaner Lubricant, and then flick it back and forward a heap of times, just to work that in there, and that will usually solve the problem. If you've got an old tape that just has your own recordings on it, you're not worried about the recording getting erased on it, you can actually give this a push back and forwards while you're playing the tape and you'll hear all sorts of crackling and stuff quite often, until you give it a good good dose of cleaner, and then it should become quiet. But each time you press it into the record position it will actually record onto the tape, and at least erase whatever you have on there, so it will mess up your recording ,but at least you can actually hear it live, hear if it's making crackling sounds, and things dropping in and out, which is a good sign the the contacts are dirty on it. But generally - they can fail these switches - but generally they just need a good clean and lubrication, if, specially if they haven't been used for a long time, and that'll get those working again for you. So now I have this deck that I was showing you before ,actually plugged back into a portable cassette player, so - just on the motor side - I haven't bothered plugging the heads back in yet. So now we can actually see when we press play, there's our take-up reel running fine. You can check these with your finger, just see - they should have a reasonable amount of torque on them, so they've fairly hard to stop, even when you do stop them there is a bit of a clutch in these as well, that's the central part that goes up - the sprocket bit that goes up into the cassette - will stop, but this outer gear should keep turning, if there's no problems. If the whole thing stops easily then it means usually you got a slipping belt, or a slipping rubber idler tyre, or some problem with these gears. So it's always good to check that, and the auto stop will click in when I do that, and fast-forward same thing, we've got a direct drive from the idler through a couple of gears to the gear on the take-up. So that should be fairly hard to stop again - you know - eventually that clutch will slip there if I hold it tight enough ,you can actually see the clutch slipping. If the belt's slipping easily then the bueltt needs replacing, and Rewind's going to cut out because of the auto stop, which I'll also hold that button down, but again we'll just check for a decent amount of torque there, we can see if our clutch stops, the belt keeps turning there, but the clutch will stop. So you can actually check them with your hands, so just make sure these have a reasonable amount of torque on them. Also in playback, you want to make sure that this pinch roller starts turning. If there's not enough pressure there the controller won't turn, and yeah often there's enough torque to get the tape turning with this, it'll actually speed the tape up, it'll go fast. So occasionally you'll get problems with the pinch roller not pushing down properly, occasionally you'll get it covered in some sort of sticky muck, so it may chew tapes, even if this take-up reel's working. If it does that there's usually something sticky all over the pinch roller, so give that a clean. As part of a normal service you clean any of this brown stuff, brown oxide off the tape, off the capstan shaft and also off the pinch roller. Best to get those cleaned. Same with the heads, faces of the heads, you just clean any brown oxide off those, if there's any on there, and any dust, anything like that. Other than that the decks are normally pretty self - you know - maintenance-free. The grease may need doing on something if it hasn't been used in a long time, but generally they don't need oil or grease unless they're a really old unit, in that case you might find your capstan - if that doesn't spin freely - that needs a bit of light oil on the shaft where it goes through the bearing, or bushing, through the through the deck there,. Also you may want to take these reels off, which, that I'm not sure how these ones come off on these modern ones, I think they clipped on somehow. The earlier ones have a little plastic circlip type thing on the end, you can take that off, yeah, this one's set up like that, so there's a couple of little clips on the end here, little plastic clips, you take them off and the reel will come off, and you can just lubricate the shaft again with some light grease or oil, but basically, yeah, if you're checking a deck, the first thing you want to do is check that when you press play, rewind, fast forward, that the motor actually starts, so when we do that we press this little switch here, as you can see, if I press that switch the motor starts. So if you're not getting your motor even starting you always got to check the pulley, if the belts are broken or something, the motor will run, you can usually hear it running. If not just put your finger or something, just touch the pulley and make sure that is turning. If it's not, then the first thing we need to do is basically check the voltage on our motor. If we press play, or fast-forward which one's play? That one. Then we should have our - in this case bit over 10 volts as its a nine volt motor. That's probably a little high, but that should be alright, it's got a speed regulator in it, so it's not gonna worry too much. So the first thing you do is check that you've got voltage on your motor. Probably should put the multimeter where you can see it. Lets see, we've got 10 volts on the motor, if you've got your 10 volts on the motor, but the motors not running, well you've got a faulty motor. Again like I say, just check that the pulleys not actually turning. You can take the motor off the mechanism and just press play, or whateve,r press the switch, get your voltage back on the motor, and just feel the pulley, see if it's going. If it's not try giving a spin, if it's tight it might just need a lubrication, but if it's just doing nothing, if it's freely turning, and you've got your voltage, 12 volt, 6 volt, 9 volt, whatever the motor is, then you've got a dud motor, something the circuit boards failed, the brushes, something like that, so it's time for a new motor. The other thing you'd also check is the switch. Occasionally they will fail. I'm on the negative the motor here, so we should have a positive, yeah our 10 volts is coming through on the switch. If we turn the power off, if you think the - if you're not getting a voltage on the motor, then the first thing you check is the switch. Put it into play, or press the contacts, whatever, and we should have continuity there. So that's a short-circuit. If that's not a short-circuit, then you've probably got burnt contacts. Pretty rare that happens, but it's possible something's wrong with the actual contacts there. The other thing of course is to check that the contacts are actually being pushed by this little metal lever in this case - when we press play you'll see this - the contacts bend across, because this lever pushes on it. When we press rewind, fast-forward, etc, that lever's across, so first check that it's mechanically being pressed. If it is and there's no continuity, and no voltage on your motor, then you've got a faulty switch. Very rare that happens, but it can do. But if we've got voltage here, and it's getting through to the motor, and we don't have a motor rotating, the motors faulty. If we haven't got any voltage here, any voltage on the motor, or any voltage on the switch then, you've got a fault further in the unit, something in between this - it should go straight back to the main B+ in the power supply, so it could be a break in the circuit board, or something like that, but generally there's not much in the way of regulators or anything else in between. If the radio is running the tape should be running. Again very rare that anything goes wrong with that section. Usually you'll find it's got mechanical problems. The motor will run, but something will be slipping, a belt will be broken, a build will be slipping, idler, etc. So that's the main problems you'll find all these. Sometimes like I say, a pinch roller won't contact properly, yeah sometimes you'll get issues with the reels or auto-stop, but generally they're pretty reliable. Another thing that happens occasionally is the record button will be broken, because someone's forced it down when this levers trying to stop it, because there's no tab in the tape. So it's just a matter of checking the mechanics here to see if someone's broken something, and also if you stop a eject, if this lever isn't moving because the door isn't opening, or the doors staying open, then you need to check this lever, it can be that the springs not pulling it back, or it's the grease is dried, and it's jammed in the open position, so when you shut the door it will just come straight open again, it can be more annoying when it actually gets stuck and won't open the door, because a lot of these units you have to open the door to get the cover off, so sometimes you got to sneak a screwdriver or something in to start opening the case and try and push this lever to get the door open so you can actually get inside to fix it. So I've got the tape deck back inside the actual unit, and the speaker's hooked back up. So if we press play, this is actually working all right. We should have - get a tape that you know - this is an old one, so I don't really know the songs on this one, but best to get one that you do know the songs on, so you can tell if they sound all right or not. Check the fast-forward, check the rewind. Try the play out. Make sure that's working. Like I say, if we don't have enough Pinch Roller pressure, we'll actually get something like this - now the Auto-stop's kicked in - so if you've got wow and flutter, or high speed, that could be a lack of Pinch Roller pressure, usually something mechanically stopping up from pushing in. Could have lost the spring that holds it in, sometimes there's a little clip on there, and that'll break off if its plastic, but um - yeah - generally just give everything a check over - and yeah - make sure your auto stop also works when it gets at the end of a tape. We can also - should go to Radio or something - and actually check that your play record works. This is just an old unit so I've never used it before. Let's see if I can find an FM station here somewhere - doesn't look like it -- so the radio may not even be working on this one, doesn't sound too good Okay I've got the radio working on this, just, the switches are pretty dicky in this old unit, God knows when it was last used. Certainly hasn't been looked after. So we should always check that our record - if we've ever played with anything - rewind the tape and try record out, make sure that the record button actually engages, and try recording a bit of radio or the like, to make sure that our Record- Playback Switch is working, that when we put the deck back in place we've actually put them levers in the right spot so that it actually engages. Now go back to tape and hopefully we've recorded something. As poor as the reception is, there it is. Better stop that before I get a copyright claim, but, but that is always a final test on these things, always make sure you check your record work is working, just on an old blank tape, because often when you put the decks back in it may not align properly with the Record-playback Switch, so you always want to make sure that that works, especially if it's like you're doing a repair for other people, you don't want them to get their unit home and find out that they can't record anything because you didn't put the switch back right, or the lever back to push the switch, it always pays to check the switch too, like I say - I dont know if I can reach this one - but oh yeah there's the lever, so I can actually flick that back and forwards, even while we're in playback mode and, um, and just get an idea what it's - what it's like, and that clicking is fine, as long as it's not making lots of scratching sounds and coming and going and it should be alright, yeah so that one should be fine in this unit, I mean this is only an old unit. I'm not gonna be restoring this or anything, it's just a good demonstration so you can see how these things work. Okay we'll just give this unit - show you how to clean a tape deck - guess we should pull the deck out of the unit here make it easier to see. So basically we've got to clean everything in what is called the tape path, which is basically everything the tape touches. So we've got an Erase head, playback record head, Pinch Roller, and our Capstan Shaft. So again we can use some methylated spirits on the cotton bud for this, isopropyl alcohol is even better, but it doesn't have to be that pure for these things. So you basically just rub your cotton bud over the face of the entire silver face on the silver head - the playback head, same with the entire face of the erase head, the capstan, you need to go up and down and rotate that, removing everything, just basically polishing it back to bare metal - shiny silver metal again. This one is luckily coming off easily. Sometimes if they're really badly coated, you might have to use a little bit of Scourer or something like that, just to get the worst of it off. That's what I used to use on VCRs, because some of the old ones it was near impossible to get the the oxide off. And then the pinch roller, you need to hold that, stop it rotating, and just rub back and forwards on the surface, then you can push it around a bit further with the cotton bud, and again, just rub the surface to get it back to the black rubber. Spin it around again, keep rubbing on there, and we just work our way around the pinch roller, the whole face of it, until we've got that all clean, which I seem to have done. Just let the Metho dry off and check if you've got it all. That's good enough. So that's the basic - all we got to do to clean a tape deck. You can do that through the door while the units still together, it just makes it a little bit more difficult. You can use the cotton bud to - like I say - push the Pinch Roller around. You won't be able to hold it, you might- could always use a screwdriver or something but you don't really want to be poking metal into the face of it, but just, you can move around and just rub back and forwards. You should be able to get the worst of it off there. The Capstan - just do it, and then you might have to hit play or something just to spin it to get it in a different position. Rub all the oxide off it, and may have to press play or fast Forward, or Rewind even, but - well actually that- yeah - that'll spin the capstan but any of the buttons just give it a quick push and I'll spin around until you've got the whole face of that clean, and that's basically how you clean a tape deck. A bit of a gimmick from back in the 80s - 70s and 80s, was this thing known as a tape head demagnetizer, that's basically similar to a degaussing coil used on a television. This is an old Tandy one, Tandy being Radio Shack in Australia. So basically this little metal bit out the end will demagnetize a head. I don't think it ever really made much difference. It was always possible the head could become demagnetized, uh could become magnetized, but I'm pretty sure these are made out of stainless steel, there is some ferrite in there usually, and copper wire, but the copper wire and the stainless steel isn't going to get magnetized, possible the ferrite could. But all you did was plug this into the 240 volts, and just rub that across the face, you can feel it vibrating, 50 Hertz hum basically. Yeah I'm not sure if you can get these things anymore, but like I say, a bit more of a gimmick than anything I think, but this was something you could do back in the day. If you had a repair shop it's possible customer would ask to have that done, but I don't think I ever actually had anyone ask to do it, and yeah really Decks that have had an awful lot of use, it might be worth doing it, but really like I say, I don't think it it did anything much useful, but that is another thing from the old days of Cassette player repair, and these were actually a consumer item you could buy if you're a Hi-fi buff or whatever, you might want to do it just for the sake of it, but it's just an interesting old bit of the past there. This was my dad's old one, which I've inherited, but I can't say I've ever really used it, it's more just a bit of a interesting old item from back in those days. Okay, now we'll have a look at the actual speed of the unit, check the motor speed's correct. So I've got a test tape here with a one kilohertz signal on it, I've got a frequency counter here - setup - that's actually, I've hooked it back to the earth on this pot here, just using an oscilloscope probe, and I've got the probe pushed onto one of the resistors that's the headphone socket. I've actually disconnected the speakers because we don't a particularly hear that one kilohertz whining away. So if we press Play on the tape here we should get some sort of reading, and this is actually a little bit slow, we're going at 985 hertz, when this should be a 1 kilohertz signal on this tape. So what we need to do is get to our motor on the back here, there's that little hole in it, it should just get in the shot there, and we use a little small precision type screwdriver, go into that hole, you should be able to feel that going to the slot of a potentiometer in there, little trim pot, and we'll adjust our speed until we're reading one kilohertz on the frequency counter there. So I've got my screwdriver in there, yeah we're going up, just give it a very gentle little adjustment, and yeah a thousand and one, that's probably close enough. Be nice to get it exactly right, but dont know if it's is gonna tweak up and down by one or two hertz. I'll give it ever so slight - whoops - sometimes if you short the pot to the case that'll make the motor speed up, but yeah that's around a thousand - thousand and one there. So I think we'll call that good enough. So er, something's going on in there frequency is dropping, I'm probably touching something here, so yeah we're settling right on a thousand there. So that's something you can do. You don't normally really need to do it, but if you've got a good Hi-fe unit it's probably worth just checking for the customer if you're repairing, one or for your own sake if your own one. Also if you ever have to replace a motor in one of these, the speed could be set to anything on the new motor, so best to just check it again, when you install it. Put one of these test tapes in. You can make your own test tape if you've got a good deck that you know is correct speed, you could just record a 1 kilohertz signal out of a frequency generator or something, a signal generator, or you can buy - this was a professional one - you can actually buy - back in the day -I don't know if you - know if WES components still sell these - Wagner electronics in Australia - which are still going, so that's their retail arm, you might be able to still get these, but um yeah, it's always something worth checking in these tape decks, is what the actual frequency - looks like the tape might have moved on to the next next thing there because our one kilohertz it seems to have ended. But that's another test we can do, also look at doing the head alignment, again that shouldn't need doing if it hasn't been touched, it would've been set in the factory, and it shouldn't have changed. But if you ever have to replace the head, or like I say, sometimes you'd swap the whole deck over with another one because it was too much too much trouble to fix the old one if it had a mechanical problem, one of these newer cheap generic decks, so you'd actually swap the deck and and usually easiest to put the old heads back back in on the new mechanics - a new mechanism - so you'd have to realign your head in that case, or if you replace a worn or faulty head, which again, very rare you ever had to do it, but it is worth looking at how you can set the azimuth, like I say, you can do it by ear, and just tweak, tweak it on a bit of music, or even on a test tone, to try and get the highest, get the high frequency sounding as clear as possible. But there is a proper way we can do it with the oscilloscope, and a test tape like this, where you get a sine wave off it, so I'll have a look at doing that as well. Okay we're going to set the azimuth alignment on the head here, that's the head, head alignment, with the tape, what angle it sits on, so we need a - basically some sort of sine wave recorded on tape. I've just got - using the one kilohertz here on this test tape. We have our oscilloscope set up - two channels, they hook to the - both stereo channels, left and right. I've got my CRO probe off - there's a couple hundred ohm resistors down near the speaker connector here and the headphone socket, so I've just hooked on to those because I know they'll be audio there, they just drop the signal lower for the headphone socket, got my CRO probe connected under one of them. I've used the volume potentiometer case as an earth point. I couldn't find my other probe for the oscilloscope because I packed it away somewhere I haven't used it for fifteen years or something, so I've just hooked an RCA lead up with a couple leads so - to both channels, so if we get our 1 kilohertz playing here, you see we've got two waveforms. If I move the position of one - that's our two stereo channels. There is a slight amplitude difference here for some reason, maybe something to do with the volume control, not sure what that is, something in this unit is slightly out in the audio section, because when we put our two waveforms on top of each other there is a slight amplitude difference here. I'm pretty sure the CRO's all set right - the oscilloscope, but for some reason here we've got the slight amplitude difference, but we're not too worried about that at the moment, we're going to do the azimuth. Now to do the azimuth you need to adjust the head - the playback head - this will be mounted - it's usually I think on the right side -or on the left side in these upside down decks, there's just a mounting post, it's a solid bit of plastic, or or a metal, so you can't adjust that one the screw just screwed down tight and the head is held in, whereas the other side here it's actually - the head is mounted on a another sort of mounting post, but it has a spring in it, so as you were just a screw in and out the head actually is pushed up and down by that spring, and that's what actually sets our azimuth adjustment, our head alignment. You can set it manually just for the highest frequencies to sound the clearest, will usually get you by if you're just doing a rough alignment, but if you want to do it properly we really need to play a stereo sinewave of some sort - we can even spread that out a bit further to make it a bit clearer - and if we adjust this screw, this is usually held on with a bit of Loctite, or something, so you need to break that. As we're screwing it I guess upwards, or is that inwards? You'll see that those two channels separate, and as we tweak it a bit more they come in to sit on top of each other, so that's the timing of the two channels, if the head's a bit out I guess one's read a bit later than the other. And if we go too far they come apart the other direction. So our aim is to get those two waveforms to exactly align. If we had like a better quality tape deck -there's a bit of a vibration in there for some reason, it might just be picking up some hum on this lead I've got - if we've got a high quality tape deck there will actually be trim pots on the board to set your actually amplitudes as well, in record and playback, so you can get those - while you're in here - you can tweak your amplitude pots to get those to exactly the same height, so they sit exactly on top of each other. This isn't too far out, there is a slight - one channel slightly louder than the other, and for some reason my azimuth seems to be affected a bit by where I sit this, but basically get those two - so the middle of the waveform is completely in line - in alignment with the other one. Have we changed to a different - no - something just pressed on something there, so I put it out for a bit but yeah, so you get your two waveforms so they're completely aligned - now we've run out of 1 kilohertz signal - get those aligned on top of each other in time which is this middle sort of crossing point should be an alignment sitting on top of each other, any sort of gap in those is some sort of a - that's slightly better - some sort of time lag there because the head's not on the right angle to the tape, and like I say, with a with a portable stereo or something you won't have any other adjustments to do, but if it's a Hi-fi type component tape deck you should have some output levels, so you can get these the the top and bottom of the waves equal on each channel, so that both of them - when we tweak them using the position on the oscilloscope they should both - the peaks and troughs should basically align exactly in height, as well as the azimuth being across the screen so that the two waveforms are completely on top of each other at this central point, and if the amplitudes are set the same they'll being completely on top of each other and look like a single waveform when you've got everything lined up properly.