This cassette player I got as a birthday present in the 1980's when I was a kid. It brings back a lot of good memories of listening to super quality stereophonic music. My previous cassette player was a small monophonic cassette radio. I thought I had disposed of this already but I found it in one of my storage boxes and decided to restore it.
I had drilled a hole for adjusting tape speed without opening the device. I decided to close the
hole so I 3D printed a plug and glued it:
The plastic case was broken around the screw inside the battery compartment so I 3D printed a patch
and glued it in place:
I tested the electrolytic capacitors and they seemed very good for being this old (40 years!)
so I did not replace all of them, only two:
Removing the front is a bit tricky and reveals the volume slide-potentiometers, which were noisy
and needed repair:
I completely disassembled the potentiometers, cleaned them and lubricated them:
The two belts were soft and loose so I replaced them with some new ones I had in storage:
Notice the black drive wheel in the picture above. The rubber was hard and cracked and
needs replacement:
I milled a new one from 2mm thick polyurethane rubber sheet:
After milling there was some burrs that needed manual removal and smoothing using a surgical knife:
The result was smooth and the drive wheel had enough friction again to give enough torque for the tape
take-up reel:
Finally, head demagnetizing and cleaning is always easier with the device opened:
