Eastham
More Class-A than ever!
Thought I'd make a thread on the restoration of my Marantz 5050M cassette deck that came with my 1040M amplifier and 2060M tuner. So where to start, well, when I first powered it up and pushed play, nothing, nada. You could hear the motor struggling to work but no drive what so ever, so I cracked this puppy open and inspected the tape mechanism and found that the belts had turned into this horrible sticky goo/ tar like substance and was covering everything, yuk, so I grabbed some alcohol based nail varnish remover (because I don't have isopropyl alcohol on hand) using a small flat head screwdriver to remove some of the more built up gunk mostly on the motor I then started using q tips and tissues to get rid of most of what was left, after that the motor now spins freely and sounds a lot healthier, I then turned my attention to the capstan wheel using some 5w 40 engine oil I have left over from lubricating my turntable to lubricate the once dry bearing, then I started to clean the faceplate knobs and plastic windows for the cassette door and VU meters, just waiting for new belts to arrive coming all the way from Germany! 
Not one from Marantz's heyday but it still has respectable build quality and weighs a ton.
