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i have a ton of broken decks and need help sorting 'em out

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purplemage

New Member
i've been trying to get a tape duplication system set up. i want to be able to dupe tapes for friends' bands and/or start a tape label/mixtape project. i don't know too much about cassette decks and duping in general. i have a pretty basic baseline knowledge of sound and recording, but not tons of gear or expertise. i don't need it to be audiophile quality, more like upper medium quality is good enough for me.

my local record store has oodles of broken decks in various states of disrepair, most of them supposedly needing new belts. i bought a few for 5 bucks each and then the dude threw in a bunch more for free, since he has a huge storage space full of broken stereo equipment. so i now have 13 decks, most of which are broken. some of them have notes taped on, which state they need belts. (that may or may not be true.) some have no notes, and are generally "broken". wondering which of these i should attempt to repair, and which are just too shitty to even worry about repairing.

here they are:
pioneer ct-f500 unknown status
pioneer ct-f650 unknown status
pioneer ct-520 note: needs belts
pioneer ct-300 note: needs belts
technics rs-b29r supposedly works fine
technics rs-955 works, might need fine tuning
aiwa ad-6550 unknown status
akai cs-707d note: needs belts
onkyo ta-2036 supposedly works fine
sony tc-we435 note: needs belts
teac a-400 unknown status
mcs 3565 unknown status
fisher cr272 note: needs belts

so basically, if you know if any of these decks are awesome or shitty for duplicating, please let me know. i don't really want to waste my time or money on the really crappy ones if i don't have to. thanks!!
and if you have any tips for starting a totally DIY tape dupe setup for a semi-newb, i'll be gladly accepting those too.
 
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Sounds like what you're looking for is the 'basic points for identifying a great tape deck vs. an average one.' Which I do not know, being more of a speaker geek. But someone will.
 
toxcrusadr said:
Sounds like what you're looking for is the 'basic points for identifying a great tape deck vs. an average one.' Which I do not know, being more of a speaker geek. But someone will.
Click to expand...
yes, all true. i need help figuring out which ones are worth repairing. i have a feeling that some of these could become great working decks with a little love. but i'm also pretty sure a couple of these are mostly garbage. i just need some tape genius to swoop in and tell me all the phat deets.
 
Hi there,
You have a lot to look at there, most decks you have I know, some I don't. I guess you are trying to do a more indie thing with recycled bits and pieces, whether you are starting with high quality clean sound, or whether you are going for something more, shall we say "organic". There are set-ups more suited to this, but this is what you have and it's what you have to work with. If you "had" to have the proper rig then you wouldn't be here asking this question, right???
Many years ago when I first got into repair of things I found this resource.
https://www.repairfaq.org/sam/tshoot.htm#tshtoc
What's really amazing is that it's still there, in all its text format glory.
There is another section on audio equipment with a good focus on cassette decks.
http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/audiofaq.htm#audaac
Hopefully that link works, I did a weird double hit on my keyboard then and I'm not quite sure what happened!

There is a lot of reading there, but it's worth it. It will detail the sort of equipment you'll have to have and how to do a lot of things.
Sure this stuff is all around on forums, but most problems are generic and this document shows you how to deal with that.

Back to your decks, after working through them and sorting out what's what I would start on the simple. The two old Pioneers are not (the 500 and the 650) , not great starter decks, but they might be worth coming back to when you have built up your skills on the others.
The newer Pioneers, the 520 and the 300 are simple and solid, all your decks will likely need new belts. These would be very good decks to start on, and not too bad in their own right.
The Technics b29r is an auto-reverse deck. While it may be ok for now, auto-reverse has a lot more going on inside, can be daunting for a pro, even more so for a beginner. As a rule of thumb, any deck with an "r" in the model number is an auto-reverse, I usually stay clear.
Don't know much about the 955, but looking at pictures of it alone I would consider it worth my time to look at. I would look at it fairly early on.
The Aiwa is a complex beast, this one isn't too bad compared to some, but save it till when you have built up more skills.
The Akai had a lot of idlers in it in addition to belts, these can be hard to source to keep this deck running properly, especially getting the auto-stop to function correctly. Might be a good practice deck, if you stuff something up, no big loss.
The Onkyo should be fairly simple to work on and should offer good results.
The Sony is a double, auto-reverse unit. While the features like automatic, both sides in turn high speed dubbing might be tempting for an operational point of view, this deck will be a very poor choice, sound quality will really suffer, and with lots of plastic parts inside they are prone to failure. I would leave this deck alone unfortunately.
The Teac A-400 is a real oddity in the cassette world. I like them, they are a bit maintenance intensive, but not that hard to work on. They can make a really nice sounding recording.
Can't say much on the MCS as it was an American store's house brand and we didn't get them. A quick image search returned models other than this one, some with similar model numbers looking like they are rebadges of Sanyo or even Technics decks. There may not be much info around on your MCS, but if it is a re-badge you may be able to find a cross reference to the deck that it is based on. Should be another good practice deck.
We didn't get much Fisher either, this unit looks fairly generic, but should be a good deck to start on too.

Hope this helps
Tony
 
Tony75 said:
Hope this helps
Tony
Click to expand...

this is very helpful. thank you! i'm going to test them all first and see what the deal is with the belts. some may or may not be worth it to me to attempt repairing.

so lemme get this straight. from what i've gathered, i should focus on bringing these decks into good repair:
pioneer ct-520
pioneer ct-300
technics rs-955
onkyo ta-2036
teac a-400

with the possibility of maybe trying out these later when i have skills:
pioneer ct-f500
pioneer ct-f650
aiwa ad-6550

and i don't have much to lose messing with these ones:
mcs 3565
fisher cr272
akai cs-707d

and i should just avoid these:
technics rs-b29r
sony tc-we435


would you recommend buying assorted belt kits, sizing the existing belts, or finding the part numbers for those belts and their respective decks? if the belt isn't what's wrong with these decks, any cool links or threads that explain deck troubleshooting in detail for a total noob?
 
Yep, your summation on the decks is correct. Depending on what is available in your part of the world (I don't know where you live, I assume the US given the brands of decks) the assorted kits might be the only option. The assorted kits might give you a size of belt that is close, but not quite right for the deck that you have, take note of this and order the next size up or down as required. You may end up with extra belts left over but that could be a good thing for all you other decks. Many years ago I bit the bullet and ordered the size I thought it was, plus one up and one down in size from that. Pretty soon I had a collection going. Now, if a deck comes my way, I know I will have a replacement. Belts are cheap in general. Of the starter decks look for cross references for sizes, you may be able to order the right size for one or two decks. I have the metric sizes for the Teac A-400 and the Pioneer 500 and 650, possibly for the other 2 Pioneer decks as well.
Read all the links that I sent you for troubleshooting, it is very general in nature, but It's a great start.
If you want some help with tools and equipment, the best things to have are often found in lists out there, but here is my basic kit.
Cotton tips, isopropyl alcohol, Japanese Philips #2 screwdriver (I like Vessel and Sunflag, best to get the Japanese ones as the quality is quite high, and they are the right angle for the screws found in that equipment, unlike Stanley or something, they are for building screws), digital camera -phones are generally good enough, you will need this to put things back again, use the focus control to focus on what you need to, some sort of bent wire pick to insert belts with, makes it al lot easier. You will need oil for the capstan bearings, take the capstan out for this, some sort of light oil like Superlube is great, clean it off all surfaces that tough tape however. You will need contact cleaner, lots of people in the US swear by DeOxit, we don't get it much down here, it is overpriced too, something about an "Australia Tax" so I use a non-residue CRC CO contact cleaner on the switches and controls initially, and a lube version afterwards.
Other tools maybe be needed after you replace belts and clean controls and tape path, but do the simple things first, and then work your way to the harder ones.
Cheers
Tony
 
dr*audio said:
Vintage Electronics is a good source for belt kits.
http://www.vintage-electronics.net/
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each kit is almost 20 bucks. sure it saves me the trouble of researching and finding the correct sizes and stuff. but i saw on some other sites that you can buy belts for a couple bucks if you know the sizes. i could save almost $100 with a little research. any really great ways of finding the correct sizes? i opened up the ct-300 and all the belts are completely goo, so i can't measure them.
 
There are various ways of measuring belts.
One that a vendor puts up is this,
http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/beltmeas.htm
I don't use these guys as I use a local supplier here, postage from the US is prohibitive for virtually everything, so I can't vouch as to whether they are any good.
But the basic idea is, place a piece of string around the belt's path and then measure this string length, this will be the length of the belt, or the circumference if the belt was made into a perfect circle. Can divide this number by pi (3.14159....) to get the diameter, which a lot of suppliers use.
The other dimension you will need is the cross-section. I use a set of vernier callipers, you can get quite good cheap digital ones now, especially over there. There should be a bit of belt somewhere that has not turned to goo to make a measurement, have to be careful here but I should be possible.
Some people worry about service manuals, they aren't always much help, especially when replacing belts, if you are lucky they will show an exploded diagram, but not always. They won't detail a step by step way to get the belt out and on again, like a car manual.
 
purplemage said:
each kit is almost 20 bucks. sure it saves me the trouble of researching and finding the correct sizes and stuff. but i saw on some other sites that you can buy belts for a couple bucks if you know the sizes. i could save almost $100 with a little research. any really great ways of finding the correct sizes? i opened up the ct-300 and all the belts are completely goo, so i can't measure them.
Click to expand...
Vintage Electronics uses better quality rubber in their belts. The cheap belts will last a year and will not give good wow and flutter specs.
 
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