Hello folks. I recently found this wonderful community and am happy to now be a part of it. My profession is in IT, but I've been an amateur hobbyist for electronic repairs for a couple decades now. I initially, like many, started out restoring vintage portable radios, the typical recap and alignment. Then I did a couple of HIFI receivers from 70s and 80s. And, now, here I am restoring walkman players of the past. What a change going from big stereo receivers to small walkmans. Not sure which is worse, lol. Seems, every eBay unit I've bought has had everything that could go wrong, well, go wrong. Currently on the bench is a WM-DDII. Physically beautiful and in great shape, inside not so much. I've replaced the typical electrolytic caps, infamous cracked center gear and performed clean and lube. The only thing left is either repairing or buying an aftermarket replacement for the lever assembly that raises and lowers the playback head [X-3305-419-0]. Sorry for the long winded intro, looking forward to being a contributing member of the forum. Cheers! -Norm
Welcome Norm, good luck with your repairs, yea it seems like anything for sale these days needs freshining up. Luckily over the last 20 years a ton of great videos and information has been posted to help. I'm waiting for 3d printing to catch up with plastic parts replacement, that's going to be a huge leap forward for us collectors.
Thank you, Mister X! 3D printing has already caught up. I have both filament and resin printers. The resin printers are exceptionally capable, almost at injection molding level. But, they are messy and the liquid resin is toxic. The hard part is not printing, but designing in a 3D CAD software. Cheers! -Norm
I was great a CadKey and good on AutoCad in the early 90's but haven't used them in over 20 years. I just need a fun battery door or some or easy project to get started.
