So I've always wanted one of these just because of how pretty they are, despite reading about the issues plaguing the clutch gear in these models. Was watching a few on eBay for months pondering whether I should go for it or not, and eventually I decided to take a leap of faith. There was an eBay listing which advertised as "new drive belt fitted" and "works", and decided to collect in person so I could personally see it working. Much to my surprise, it was. I played a tape a bit, both directions, ff/rw, all seemed in good order. So seems like I had found a winner (or so I thought) and bought it. Upon arriving home, I popped in a tape and played it. Suddenly, the fwd takeup reel stopped spinning and ofc it started eating the tape. Took the tape out to have a look and couldn't see anything wrong. The spindle was fine and turning without a tape. But as time went on, I noticed that the FWD spindle would then stop spinning after about half a turn (I kept rotating the RWD spindle by hand to prevent it from autoreversing). Fiddling around a bit more and much to my surprise, by the end of the night, both spindles had popped off entirely and frankly I was livid. Obviously I soon learned this was due to issues with the gears holding the spindles in place, but at that point I actually didn't know about this - only the issue affecting the clutch gear, which funnily enough was actually seemingly OK here. The next day with a clear mind I decided to take things apart, here's some observations: 1. They weren't wrong that the belt had been changed, but whoever did this change didn't clean the melted rubber on the flywheels and around the casing. And I'm not sure they used the right size belt either. 2. FWD takeup gear was cracked, hence why it stopped spinning after half a turn basically when the crack lined up with the drive gear it would get stuck as there was extra resistance at that point. Also obviously why the spindle popped off. 3. RWD takeup gear looked ok - no cracks or anything so I am not sure why that spindle was loose too. 4. Dolby switch had its tab broken off - I already knew before purchasing there was something wrong with it when they said it would slide but nothing happens but this confirmed that it was indeed broken and not just misaligned. 5. The LED's light guides linking the light to the exterior housing where also broken. First things first... Deep cleaning of the entire transport and the gears/flywheels. Managed to get 99% of the rubber residue out. The pinch rollers looked like they had 30+ years of gunk built up on them but managed to get these nice and shiny and good as new. Didn't need replacement. Capstan and head looked good but I gave them a good clean with IPA as well. Next I decided to tackle the LED... I had an old donor WM-EX70 which has a similar LED, but thicker so that combined with the fact that on the WM-150 the LED unit was underneath the volume control, that's not a resolder job I would have considered given my really poor and limited soldering skills/equipment. So I decided to do something way more crude - I snapped the protruding LED guides off the donor unit and superglued them on the WM-150, doing my best to align them as straight as possible as well as align them with the holes on the exterior housing. My beautiful superglue job: After that I moved on to the Dolby switch. After figuring out if it was possible to somehow drill something into it to create a new "tab" to latch on to the slider I gave up and decided I had to do some soldering. Was a little apprehensive about this because of how little experience I have with it but I thought what the hell. The switches on the donor EX70 unit were identical so I desoldered one off there which came off really easily. However when desoldering the broken Dolby switch off the WM-150, it proved more challenging due to the tight space (and not so fine solder tip) and I was pretty sure I messed up the pads when taking the switch off. I decided to push through anyway and with a lot of patience, a steady hand, and many drops of sweat later I managed to get the switch back on. No idea if it would work yet or not but I did what I could. My beautiful switch soldering job: Finally, time to deal with the broken/loose gears. I pondered for a while as to what to do with the cracked FWD takeup gear. I even tried using similar sized gears from the EX70 but no luck. Tried to use superglue but no luck here either. Then I thought, what if I solder welded it? Having never done this before and no idea it would work or not but the gear is already broken so nothing to lose. I basically made a small weld across the crack, working my way from the centre towards the teeth, but not going all the way to the outside and taking extra care not to mess up the teeth. In the end it looked something like this (circled the part where I welded it): When I pressed the spindle back into the gear and spun it by hand, I was actually stunned that it was now rotating freely without getting stuck/resistance at the welded part. Since the RWD takeup gear was loose too, I decided to just put a bit of superglue on that one. Before putting it all back together, I also replaced the belt. Put it all back together, made sure the LEDs and switches lined up, popped in a tape and hoped for the best. The result... Well one week and about 24 hours of playback later, it all seems to be holding up and playing really well. And the sound quality of this unit is insanely impressive. Not a long term success yet by any means, but certainly promising and hopeful. I guess the moral of this story is, don't give up on these gorgeous units. I did order a set of replacement gears, pinch rollers, belts, etc. but with a bit of patience and perseverance it seems these can be made to work again without even needing any replacement parts (at least for the transport, gonna ignore the Dolby switch in this case). Though I can't speak for the clutch gear, hopefully this story is an inspiration for anyone who might have one of these lying around not working. It's worth it for the sound quality! Good luck!
Can you show a picture of the completed unit so I don't have to search Google to find out what this model looks like? Thanks
I do still have one small issue with the unit though - the FWD direction plays a bit slower than the REV. Any advice/ideas on this would be useful. I've used contact cleaner on the RV601 speed pot, tried swapping pinch rollers around, and cleaned all the gears but the speed differential doesn't change.
1. I would try different tapes to make sure it's just not your tape playing slowly in One direction versus the other. 2. I would observe what rotates in forward direction and then lube all of the axial items that rotate in that directions versus the reverse direction. I know you've been all through this unit but you may have to take it all apart and put a just a drop of oil on all of those rotating points. 3. I would actually oil every every item that rotates in the unit, all the bearings and such to ensure it all works smoothly since you're having this issue of being slow in One direction and and just not so slow in the other one. 4. My belief it would be number one. decentman4you2007@gmail.com I don't know why I added my email address. I just seemingly do this for every posting lol
Thanks for the suggestions. It's definitely not the tape because it's happening on all tapes. I didn't oil things yet, so I'll take a look at the lube/oil next. If I am not mistaken, the drop of oil goes on the shafts, and the lube (I have Molykote EM-30L grease) on the gear surfaces/teeth? Please correct me if I am wrong.
I use silicone oil on the shaft's and I just clean, but do not grease gear surfaces in the tiny walkman gears as I believe that gives the teeth more friction to over come. In larger boombox's where these is more motor/power I may put a dab of oil on the gears but only as a last resort, after cleaning the gears, but definativly oiling the axis shafts.
I oliled all the gear shafts, rewinded/fwd a few times, but no change Tried across multiple tapes. FWD is still slower than REV. On a calibration tape of 3150 Hz the difference is 3170 on REV and 3090 on FWD. I'm out of ideas at this point.
Well I'm unaware of the belt routing on this model so my only question could be does the motor change direction when it goes to the other direction playing the cassette and if so it could be. The motor is going bad in the other direction. Other than that I just don't know.
The motor doesn't change direction, it always rotates the same way. I did some oiling and further cleaning of the entire transports. Oiled the motor a little as well. However not much improvement in the speed differential, if any. Reverse is still faster than Forward. Looking for any other ideas at this point.Would the clutch have any impact on directional speed variation?
Oh you oiled the heck out of it. The clutch always rotates in the same direction so that wouldn't have any issue. And since the motor doesn't change direction, the only other thing I could think of would be is that the gears are more worn down in One direction versus the other. As this isn't getting much use in reverse as it did so much more in forward, so the forward gears are worn down more than the reverse gears are. I'm thinking the diameter of the gears versus normal. That could be only the variation that I could think of . Another thought would be is. Does this have two clutches? One could be worn down more than the other one but if only has one clutch then that wouldn't be the issue.
Just the one clutch so wouldn't be that. I'm just wondering though if there was gear wear, would that actually impact playback speed? Since the capstan is driven directly by the belt, the gears are only for takeup.
So I decided to remove the FWD capstan entirely and swap the bearing, added a touch of lube there as well. I think that has made some improvement, the difference is much reduced. Will play it for some time to see how that holds.
I'd be interested to see you run your calibration tape through this machine now that you made those changes and see what you measure?
Before adjusting the capstan/bearing, I was getting 3080 Hz fwd and 3200 Hz rev on a 3150 Hz signal. Now it's 3100 Hz fwd and 3125 Hz rev. Small enough to not really be an issue tbh. Once the system settles a bit I will adjust the speed again to get it around 3150 +/- 15 Hz or so.
