What is the easiest Walkman to maintain or repair?

First thank you so much for taking the time to give me all those useful info! I visited WALTZ once and it was very interesting. But as you mentioned the prices are very high even if I think they are justified! I believe I have more choice in Yahoo Auctions and I am quite familiar on making purchase on this site. I am taking a close survey on the items you gave me the link to. Let's see if I can get them eventually!

 

As I recently got a WM-EX662, I'm interested in the enhancements Groove should bring compared to MegaBass.
It is one or the other, not both at the same time. I could not find a comparison between the 2, or for instance with Aiwa's DSL.
Any documentation or links would be appreciated.

 

With modern in-ear headphone, I find those sound enhacements to be "too much" . I have a pair of Sony sport earbuds and they provide plenty of bass on their own. Megabass, DSL, Groove were all designed to overcome the limitations of open earbuds which sound very thin without any enhancements; luckily earbuds have improved significantly from the 80's or 90's and I can enjoy music with no equalisation at all.

 

Thanks for the reply, but what does Groove do?

 

I think unless a frequency response measurement is done on both Groove and MegaBass, a clear answer would be harder to find as not all technical documents were made available to the public.
It can be assumed that given the different name the 2 enchancements have different frequency responses: maybe different cutoff frequencies and even different slopes.
It's also the question if both bass and treble are enchanced or just bass ? Something I noticed on AIWAs with DSL is the output coupling capacitors are 330uF instead of the typical 220uF, so even with DSL off
the bass will be more pronouced compared to a unit without DSL. Same on SONYs with MegaBass.

It's also something that would vary depending on headphones impedance. So a "typical" impedance (like 32 ohms) must be assumed even if measurements are to be done, otherwise the measurements won't be relevant.

 

Unfortunately the EX-655 and 662 are the only Groove Walkmans I have, both in need of at least a new belt.
Aiwa’s DSL is described by Hugo and it is indeed not just bass amplification, also higher frequency amplification based on the settings.

 

I have EX655 and Groove is Megabass on steroids, I'm not sure if it boosts high frequency but I think it does.

 

Sony WM EX-36/39. They are bulit to last, won't break down until you physically damage it. Only thing that can happen is that pinchrollers need to be replaced after all these years. Easy to repair? I fixed autoreverse problem in EX36 (reverse side playing backwards) by cleaning little pieces of metal and bend it with screwdriver so they connect properly.I guess tht sums it up.

Also - older Panasonic units like RQ-P35, RQ-V80 etc. These are realy simple units - mechanical controls, no Dolby. But... i have P35 and it literally never broke. It have two belts mechanism but with pretty large flywheel - no problems with W&F, also no problems with pulling 90min tapes (that happened to me with some slim models). Only thing that never works in these is auto-stop but i don't really care about it. My P35 have one disadvantage - XBS system is nowhere near as powerful as MegaBass system. It seems like Panasonic "corrected" it with S-XBS system that makes bass so strong that i can feel drivers working in my headphones xD