Hello, I opened my cassette deck and found this. I just want to confirm. Is this a capacitor leak or some kind of glue? The cassette deck seems to be working normally. I just have a fairly high wow flutter at 0.2
definitely look like the have leaked badly and will need replacing - it's a relief for me when I open a unit up and the symptoms are plain to see! Good luck
It looks more like glue to me. Through hole capacitors are more likely to blow the deliberate scribe lines in the top. As for why they would be glued, I once took some equipment to a professional test house to be tested against the standards for road transport. At the end of the test it rattled like a maraca due to heavy components detaching themselves from the board.
That is glue. To hold the big components down like Longman said. I have come across identical brown glue like that around big capacitors in the old Sony boomboxes also. Like toffee all over the place. A nuisance to pick away at and pull out the capacitors while de-soldering.
Why ? @Boomboxholic Even though these are critical capacitors and it's not technically difficult to change. There's no direct impact on sound quality if these capacitors degrade. There's no gain in doing it early, am I wrong?
Indeed no need to replace the capacitors if they aren't leaky and don't give any symptoms like audible mains hum in the audio (reffering to the big filter ones). That brown thing is indeed glue for mechanical rigidity as it has been already pointed out. Leakeage won't be that visible on the top side, more underneath like corroded traces and dull looking solder joints. As for the 0.2% WRMS W&F, that is more likely to have a mechanical cause.
