Ok, I have a little bit of a problem. I just changed the pinch roller to my DDII and the tape won´t play anymore. It will play if I put some pressure on the bottom of the pinch roller holder (push the roller towards capstan) while playing, but as soon as I take the pressure off it just stops. I changed back the old pinch roller and got DDII to play again, but now its a bit slow and there is some W&F. Any ideas what went wrong? Thanks!
It might be the spring for pinch roller pressure. That’s the only thing that comes to mind while browsing service manual.
Well I did not get the new pinch roller to work, but now the DDII works again. Speed issue and w&f seems to be from the small spring that is between pinch roller and head assemply that has gotten too weak.
Interesting... did you find what is wrong with new pinchroller? And Welcome to the club of “resurrectionists”
No I did not. It feels and rolls the same when installed, but when tried with cassette it just stops. Only thing I noticed is that the new is little bit barrel shaped and the old one is complete cylinder.
I recommend you read this: https://fixyouraudio.com/instructions/pinch-rollers/ as well as this: https://fixyouraudio.com/tutorials/wow-and-flutter-my-know-how/ Good Luck
If you can get Naphta (here it is sold among lacquers and paint thinners in the hardware stores) then just treat your old pinchroller with it. A tip from a professional Nak decks restorer, Willy Hermann. Barrel-shaped pinchrollers is what you need for cassette deck, it helps with self-centering the tape, but in Walkmans it may be a bad idea. Extra pressure needed from that weak spring may slow down the tape. Does your old pinchroller have a dent in it?
Actually the old one is perfectly good. Cleaned It with IPA. Shouldn’t have touched it in the first place, but since it came with the other new components I thought it would be a good idea to change it too.
I'd get a digital micrometer and check the size of both, just a hair off will be significant. I don't think these rollers change in size with temperature and humidity, it would be a manufacturing issue. When you look at cassette tape, it's pretty thin and a bad roller won't work. Bigger decks like reel to reel are more forgiving, if the roller goes bad you can cheat with some tape, until you buy an new roller but Walkman size players have really tight tolerances and those micro springs, just touch them and they stretch too much. We have stores here with really cheap micrometers, they're great for getting an idea of the size, if your doing machining or more serious about repair work you'd want to get something much nicer.
I'm trying to figure out how to do these on a lathe or drill press. I've read a lot of threads on how easy it is but they never show how it's done. I think they are sanding down the material instead of cutting it with a normal lathe tool, I just need some time to play around a little. The grinding "attachment" for vintage lathes is pretty expensive so I'd like to hear from someone with experience making these.
