Hi, recently I got infected by the Walkman virus… Many year ago, I was an enthusiastic Hi-Fi fan, owned some really nice amps, tapes, tuners and speakers with of course several Walkman’s for music listening on-the-go. The portable players became then digital and I bought the Sony DAT TCD D3, TCD D7, TCD D8, TDC D100 and the Tascam DAP1. In my younger years I was surfing the “digital wave”, was an early-adopter of CD (DAT obviously as well), Mini-disc, and the iPod of course too. Now with many Gigabytes of mp3 sound I feel more and more lost in my characterless digital music library. Rather skipping to the next song than listening to it I was longing for the good old time of vinyl and cassettes… So recently I bought two Sony Walkman on ebay. Both WM DD series. Both of course with broken center gear (although one was described as “mint condition”). While searching for information to disassemble the devices I found this forum. Cool to be here!
Hello Analogtape and welcome to the forum I have beeen chronically involved with this virus so welcome to the club
hi AT, welcome to the forum - but please don't expect to be cured from your virus here - it's more like with the "anonymous alcoholics"
feels like at home... The nice thing is, you don't feel really sick with this virus. So I started disassembling the two WM-DD and I found out some interesting things: 1. It’s probably too ambitious to start disassemble without a manual. I'm a bit in doubt whether I will succeed to bring these devices to work again... 2. The center gear of the WM-DDII is not broken. Should I break or replace it or continue to use it as it is? Is there a risk that the gear will break in the next time? 3. While the center gear seems to be ok, the secondary wheel (black plastic, mounted upon the center gear) is missing one or two cogs. What is the function of this gear wheel? 4. If I should unexpectedly succeed to reassemble the WM: Is a restored Walkman “fit” enough for a daily use or is it more for collector purposes? A lot of questions…
@autoreverser thats exactly how I feel in the "real world" outside of S2G/AA @Analogtape you must be following my steps: thousands and thousands of CDs and SACDs, terabyte of flac files... but here I am, spinning LPs and figuring whether I need 90min, 100min or 110min cassette for my next "rip"
well, you know that you're in serious trouble when: 1. you're looking for something (...maybe spare key for your car), but whatever drawer you pull, whatever lid you lift - all you find is Walkmen 2. you have boxes full of accessories but don't know anymore where they belong to 3. instead of a famour fountain-pen you have a setof nice amber-handled watchmaker-philips-screwdriver 4. when you go for weekend-shopping you come home - and realize you forgot bread and cornflakes - but you bought an XXL-box AA-batteries 5. you start buying pencils not for the colour, but for their shape (...to hand-wind cassettes) 6. you go to a huge flea-market and don't see anything but tables without any Walkman 7. you get cold ears even in hot summer because you forgot one day to wear your foam-covered retro-headphones if at least 3 of those symtomes fit you - you're in great companion here - let's talk abot it - bring matraces and guitars
@autoreverser: Thank you for your diagnostics –more than 3 of the 7 symptoms are fitting so it seems to be a serious case. So glad to feel in good hands here… In the meantime, I had to learn that there’s difference between enjoying music from an analogue source and get that source to work (again). In my younger years I repaired cars and bikes. Even changed the camshaft of a Citroen SM (those who are familiar with that stuff may know what this means). But today a Citroen SM seems to me by far easier to repair than the watchmaker-size mechanics of a Walkman. Well, no time to write anymore, I have to continue the search for some screws down somewhere in the gap of the parquet floor.
