Kenwood KX-1030 Worth Keeping?

[Ronkeidar]

You've got the good Dolby chips so no worries there.
It is impossible to find a complete pinch roller assembly, with it mounted on the metal arm, so what you are going to have to do is measure the pinch roller, including the shaft it mounts on, and try to find a replacement, which is really hard to find. First remove the assembly and then you have to remove the roller. Get a small piece of hard wood and drill a hole in it a little larger diameter than the shaft. Look carefully at the arm. You will see that one hole is larger than the other hole. The shaft is press fit into the smaller hole. Place the smaller hole over the hole in your board and drive the shaft out with a small nail and a hammer. Drive it out just enough to be able to remove the roller, NOT all the way. When you put the new roller in, reverse the process, driving the shaft with the hammer and a nail set, gently, till it's flush.

Important: The pinch roller pin is soldered to the plate on one side!
Don't use a hammer on it! You will destroy it.
The pin must remain perfectly parallel to the pin carrying the metal case of the pinch roller.
If you have luck, you will find the part on ebay ( after a month of searching it showed up for me).
Otherwise, order just the wheel: Outer diameter 13mm, inner hole 2.5mm, rubber width 7.3mm, width at the base 8.3mm.
The challenging part is now to bend the outer metal, replace the wheel, and bend it back (it is quite soft, but you need to keep the back and floor straight as much as you can. Once you bend the metal back, carefully check that the wheel is perfectly parallel to the capstan, and if not, take it out and bend as needed (don't put pressure on the pivot holding the pinch roller)

 

[dr*audio]

Important: The pinch roller pin is soldered to the plate on one side!
Don't use a hammer on it! You will destroy it.
The pin must remain perfectly parallel to the pin carrying the metal case of the pinch roller.
If you have luck, you will find the part on ebay ( after a month of searching it showed up for me).
Otherwise, order just the wheel: Outer diameter 13mm, inner hole 2.5mm, rubber width 7.3mm, width at the base 8.3mm.
The challenging part is now to bend the outer metal, replace the wheel, and bend it back (it is quite soft, but you need to keep the back and floor straight as much as you can. Once you bend the metal back, carefully check that the wheel is perfectly parallel to the capstan, and if not, take it out and bend as needed (don't put pressure on the pivot holding the pinch roller)

I think someone may have messed with your pinch roller assembly. The original shaft is stainless steel and shouldn't be able to be soldered. I've never seen one that was soldered.

 

[Krossfeld]

Managed to adjust the motor to within fractions of a Hz of the test tape.

Something is still keeping the Pause button from locking.
All the springs are in place, and all the other controls are working as they should. Pause actually pauses as long and you press the button down, but it doesn't click into place. It's like something is blocking it, but I don't see what that is.

When you hit the pause button it moves the lever marked #1 at the bottom of the shot. Lever #1 hits the gold arm marked #2 and moves it up in the photo, stretching the spring just to the right. See next photo.
View attachment 2310753

At the same time the gold arm above moves in, the part marked X below moves up and moves the arm drawn in with dashes so the white plastic piece moves toward camera. I'm wondering if that piece should be on the other side of the part marked X below, and move back, away from camera. The white plastic end-piece can be see in the photo above with the unmarked arrow pointing at it from the left.
View attachment 2310752

There's a part on the back of the relay linkage that has a U shaped slot on the end of it and it slides into a groove on the nearest standoff

 

[N2552]

Kenwood KX-1030 great deck's. Sound great I owned two oversees till August 2022. Matches brilliantly with the 6100 7100 8100 9100 amplifiers and 6500 7500 tuners etc.

What I didn't like about these decks, that they had a basic magnet (no electro magnet) erase head. In in my case that caused record issues.

 

[dr*audio]

Kenwood KX-1030 great deck's. Sound great I owned two oversees till August 2022. Matches brilliantly with the 6100 7100 8100 9100 amplifiers and 6500 7500 tuners etc.

What I didn't like about these decks, that they had a basic magnet (no electro magnet) erase head. In in my case that caused record issues.

Incorrect.

 

[N2552]

Interesting. Because I had purchased two Kenwood KX-1030 decks from same seller in 2018 or 19 from, and while I was living in Canada.. Both mint, like never used all. And both had the same erase head, Thus without any wiring and were for sure just permanent magnet style erase heads mounted on a swingarm when record was by activated by pushing the rec. 'piano key'!
And make clean recordings over existing recordings was thus in my case impossible.

So I wonder. Where they then prototypes or pre production or first batch? Or did somebody - seller maybe - mess with these decks and replaced the supposedly original swing arm mounted electromagnetic wired type erase heads with these permanent magnet erase heads? .

Dang I'm curious to know now if there was more then one version of this deck.

Anyways; thx for your input! Everyday is a day, one can learn something new on AK.