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1982 Toshiba KT-S1 Portable Cassette Player Restoration

Navanoise

Member
I bought this in 1982 (year I graduated HS). Was looking for a Walkman, but decided this sounded better and I think was cheaper in cost. Plus, it came with a nifty shoulder strap case and FM module. It has a great quality build too. A year ago I bought a belt for it and it sort of worked but not well, so I shelved it. After getting a 1994 Sony Walkman going again I revisited working on this. I found a YouTube video that almost had all the pertinent info on how to get it going again, but mine had an issue where the right channel was way louder. I found out it was fairly easy to take the main board out and underneath is a balance control. I still couldn't get it to sound right. Yup, I cleaned everything and adjusted the head alignment and all I could. So, I looked on eBay and found a parts model for a few bucks. It didn't have the FM module, case, battery compartment door,etc. I ended up using the chassis of that and replaced the belt, did all the cleaning and alignment and parts from my old one and here it is. Is sounds great! Turns out this has two mono amplifier chips for make stereo. It's quite loud with proper headphones. Says .6 watts. Only downside of that power if it sucks up battery juice. Cassette playback is only 2-3 hours, but with the FM one can still get some music out of it. (Now I have rechargeable batteries so no worries). This was in direct competition to the early Sony's of the day. It was considered state of the art for the time. Another cool feature was the two headphone jacks.
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Original belt
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The belt was easy to replace.
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Tet run!
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