Some of you will remember the Toshiba SX-3 Compo I restored a couple of months ago............ This Aiwa came with it as part of the sale & @ £5 each, it was worth taking a punt!! This stereo was in a terrible state when it arrived so it was put in boombox room to wait for repair - This was early this year I seem to remember! I wasn't too happy to find an autoreverse tape mechanism, I really don't like them much at all as well as being somewhat unreliable certainly in boombox form............ I noticed that the rest of it seemed to be a decent spec from I guess, 1985 time - Dolby B, graphic equaliser (Switchable) Line In jacks along with a very decent tuner & amplifier section & lots of led's I love these!! So, cassette deck out & new belts fitted after removing the black sludge left over from the disintegrated original belts - This stuff was everywhere inside the machine & it sticks to anything it touches Damn rubber! lol I observed quickly after this stage of the repair that the head was free to move both ways without any of the geared teeth that are supposed to position the heads for side A & side B! In an eggshell - The deck is f**ked & extremely complex to even look at never mind attempt to repair! Yes I was certainly up the boat without a paddle with this one as far as the cassette section goes.............. Not to worry I decided - Lets clean & service the rest of it & see what happens, I can keep looking out for another one for parts, although these things were notorious for the head rotator's gears shearing off rendering them as useful as a chocolate fire!! Once washed out in the sink with warm soapy water, I noticed that in fact, this stereo has a very nice high quality finish & appearance - It was so filthy & grimy that the beautiful front panel was simply not visible until cleaning! Great build quality too, everything pluggable for service & repair (Excluding the stupid autoreverse deck) making it easy to put it back together & test the Line in & radio tuner......... Once reassembled, it looks really nice like it once would have looked! - I will try & find a doner deck as fixing these decks is a headache I intend to pass on The Sound? This machine really rocks with a great stereo soundstage & prescence! Output power is very generous too - Such a shame they didn't use a non autoreverse deck, it would now be working if they had done!! It's heavy too when all together & I guess for £5.00 it was well worth saving - I just hate not being able to restore cassette operation to any job But for now: Et Viola!!
Beautiful Aiwa!!! Such a shame about the deck though... But... I am glad to see that I am not the only one who Hates auto-reverse mechanisms, with St.Nick I am in a real good company!
I like the styling, and cleaned up it looks like new. I wonder if you could convert it to non-autoreverse by locking the head in one direction - a bit of epoxy might do the trick.
looks very beautiful. The speaker grills show some discoloration and i was wondering whether or not applying some black spray can fix it
That looks a lot like a 'box my cousin had years ago. He worked for a Polk Audio store near his home, and always had the best stuff for the money.
