New WM-DD center gear prototype is here (EDIT - final version is here)

I'd be happy to host the file on the analogueoctober site if that helps

 

Great news. I just purchased three.

 

Ordered two myself. And I only have one DD unit. Nice to get a spare while I can.

 

I haven't received any email notifications on new replies in this thread since July and assumed that Marian had run into more problems with the production of the gears. Now it seems Stereo2go has had problems with their notification service instead - oh well.

Was surprised to see there has been action here all along and that Marian now has received upgraded gears that work according to plan. Congrats, Marian! Well done! Looking forward to seeing your instructions to see if I can do the job myself or will need your help.

BTW: Just found a red 1982 WM-DD here in great shape - no clicking, very stable with regards to W&F and a great full sound, despite not being serviced in 35 years - amazing! I had thought that the original DD also would have the center gear problem??

Best
Jørn

 

Truly, I didn't expect so much interest in new gears. I sold more than I expected in the first days. May be it's just some initial boom. Now I'm busy to prepare all shipments....
I need to find some way how to make it automatic.

I was also working on DD repair manual. It is not possible to post it here due to max limit of 40 images. I just did copy-paste from LibreOffice to S2G editor. It looks so ugly..

 

The guide is excellent, but indeed incomplete: can you upload the pdf to an on-line host (sendspace, google drive ...) ?
If it is too big, make it available as a torrent and use the power of "distributed download". Otherwise I think someone here can host your file on their web server, hoping the provider can sustain the traffic

excellent guide, really thank-you

 

Marian,

Good to hear that the gears are selling well. You deserve to get some commercial success out of this.
And thanks for processing my orders

 

Yesterday I bought three gears and a ring for D3. I join the desire for success, because the brilliant work deserves to be rewarded. Good sales!!!

 

Received four gears today. They are looking great! I will buy some more in order to restore my complete WM-DDxx collection. Although the gears are listed on ebay separately for the models DD, DDI, DDII, DD30 etc. they are all identical as the original gear is as well. right?

 

Thank you, thank you. Luckily, all gears are identical. If they weren't, whole project would be even more expensive.

 

Anybody had the time yet to do a repair with Marian's new gears?

 

My first Sony...
Just finished a few minutes ago the first repair of a WM-DD30 with Marian's gear.
It works perfect - no w/f and no noise -thank you Marian
The fitting of the gear itself is maybe a bit trickier than to fix the screws of a car wheel as mentioned in Marian's the step-by-step guide
The guide is extremely help- and useful. By following each step it was in general less difficult than I supposed.

 

I did the repair after receiving the gear 2 days ago. The instructions where short, but I thought it looked straightforward enough. I did it on a wm-dd33 and the problem I'm having is when the player is lying flat the screws of the gear seem to rub on the metal part. Up-side-down it's silent. I'm waiting for the PDF with instructions to see what I did wrong, but assembled / disassembled it 3 times now...
[GALLERY=media, 671]IMG_4239 by DannyG posted Sep 7, 2017 at 11:09 PM[/GALLERY]

 

From the image that you sent, it looks that the white gear is installed correctly - side with red dot is down.
The gear kit is designed in such a way that screws should not overhang plastic gear. There is cavity around the screws holes, 0.3 mm deep. The screw head thickness is 0.35 mm. These are special, custom made screws, with thin and wide head.
Did you screw all six screws tightly? On your image, one of the screws look like not screwed completely. But may be I just do not see it very well.
Also, when gear assembly is removed from walkman, check if some of the screws doesn't overhang and also check if plastic gear is attached to the metal ring tightly. There can also be some "dirt" between them, causing troubles. Whole DD mechanics design is very precise. Even 0.1mm out-of-tolerance positioning will cause troubles.
If you applied screw locker to the screws, be sure that there is only thin layer of it and that it is not located on top of the screw head.

 

With Marian's excellent guide and all the experiences with images starting to be shared here we are going to have a lot of DD Walkman running happily again

 

Yes, I got it done! I mistakenly used a DDII gear as the base thinking it was the same, but it was worn too much (the gear could tilt too far, and the thickness of the top gear is different). So swapped it, and now runs beautifully! Thank you so much for the effort you've put in this Marian!

 

Please can you explain a bit more. Not sure what you mean when you say "DDII" gear as the base?
Thanks

 

I took the gear out of a WM-DDII that broke, put the new gear on that one and put it into the WM-DD33. I've included a picture of that gear (I've glued a small part with new teeth into it already but I wanted to fix it with the new gear). On the third picture you can see the top gear. I believe this is a bit lower than the one from the dd33. On the third picture you can also tell that the gear hits the metal on the right so that's probably why the screws ran into the metal there. The DDII needs a new head, I only have 1 channel :-(

 

So your DDII gear is either too worn or is slightly different specification/Tolerance compared to DD33? Is that what you mean?
thanks

 

I installed my first gear in a DD2.
Marian, this is sensational what you have done here.
My many experience along with your gear make now this work easy for me.
@DannyG
It is important that all screws are screwed in completely.
Look carefully at the screw heads.