Happy ending first: after a few weeks of cluttering my workbench two CSD-NS1 Aiwas are back in two pieces and ready to get out of my sight: Both Aiwas died in Play mode, with cassettes inside and pinchrollers pressed against tape and capstan for God knows how many years: Once you get over the usual of melted belts and recent tenants... you get a chance to admire the "state of the art" of mechanics circa 2002: feather-light plastic flywheels, four belts of different sizes, whats not to like? More surprises on the flip side: Two autoreverse decks, four pinchrollers (and No, these are not closed-loop dual-capstan mechanisms): how did we get three out of four rollers dented??? As Kung-Fu master would have said: your math is better than mine! Anyway, one Aiwa gets one good roller for Forward Play, slightly dented for Reverse. Second Aiwa gets the leftovers. As a reward for the efforts, what do we get? W&F at 0.4, speed adjustable through a pot on the control board: No, it is not a quartz-locked mechanics: More fun ahead: the whole cassette-tuner-CD block weights over 4 lbs but it is secured to the front panel with two screws through the front control PCB. What a Grand Idea for collecting on shipping damages: Generous amounts of epoxy to strengthen the board: Before you ask: these cracks go all the way through the traces, time to do some microsurgery short pieces of multistrand copper wire and some patience with Hakko tip fixes the traces The fun part of thorough cleaning and waxing finishes the job
Wow, that's a labor of love, thanks for sharing, it looks great without the speaker covers. That kind of soldering can be hair-pulling but very rewarding. I don't think I remember an auto reverse recording feature or never really thought about it, is that kind of an oddball feature?
Yes, the features are all there, and OneTouch Recording is really One Touch: you press Rec button and your (well, mine!) test cassette gets erased! I use Nak LX-3 to make cassettes for boombox replay, but these Aiwas make the job so much easier: less one touch And you get a bonus of some extra W&F which I actually like, makes the sound less digitally "perfect" Oh, and its Q-Surround is just amazing: sound goes around you with a hole in the middle you can fall into! X-Bass option is pretty lame, but you cannot have everything
Great photos of the repairs. You have an impressive workbench and tool setup there. So are you keeping one (or both) after all that effort ? I am wondering how you ended up with two. Was the original intention to try and make one good one out of two ?
My fellow neighbor @Boodokhan bought these, and during our last meet (no boose, my Boss can attest to that!) he kindly offered to fix one for him and get the second for my own whatever! The good one goes back to the owner, the one with both rollers dented (W&F at 0.55 instead of the solid 0.4) will stay with me for trade/eBay
Amazing work. I knew this work requires a lot of knowledge and expertise and i am very grateful of you. I love the look of this fantastic box. When I bought the first one it was several months ago and I opened it to install new belts but found it extremely complicated and my intervention caused some significant damage to the unit. Then I looked for another one which didn't work So i decided to look for a working one but any time this comes on yahoo japan is in not-working condition. So i decided to ask my dear friend who is very expert as you can see by looking at those microsurgery done on the PCB. I am very lucky to have such a great friend.
This reminds me: I need to get my Aiwa portable worked on. It only seems to need belts, but recalling what a nightmare opening-up my original Panasonic SGJ-500 was, I rather leave it to a pro.
Great, it can be repaired. How to adjust the mono channel and stereo of the radio without a remote control?
Hi, new member here and I just posted that obtained one of these and it needs belts, but I'm having problems getting the main unit out of the box. The back is off and I can move the main system a little, but it seems to be caught up on the the front. I removed the volume knob, but something else is stopping from sliding this thing out. Any help would be appreciated.
that is CORRECT!!!... sorry, since English is my fourth foreign language I had to master (Ukrainian being the 'native', then Russian, then French (Why??? beats me, ask my mommy!), and only at the end the one I have to use every-day-nowadays) my LOVE means HATE That is one nice-looking but totally trash-y piece of technology! I do not have mine any longer, it got burned! so I cannot post any more photos. But from my fading memory: once you remove the back, look for the go-thru holes (use flashlight!) to find (I believe, four) screws which keep the face-plate anchored to the innards. That much I remember: do not force anything, and stick long/real-long Philips No.2 screwdriver in any hole you find around the edges until you get those buggers out! If you force it, you will break the mainboard
Hi Jorge, what’s the trick to get the unit out of the housing. Mine is stuck at the front by the cd tray. See photo. Bottom is moving out, but the top is retained by something. Hey thanks I found only two screws I could see and took the out and the unit came free. I did crack one screw hole a little, but superglue should hold it together. All the belts look loose and one dropped off entirely . Now I need to find the right size belts from my spares and route them properly on the pulleys. Thanks again as I was not sure if the screws I could see were the culprits or holding the board together.
Update - managed to change all the belts and then reassemble hoping for the best. Unfortunately power on and crickets, nothing comes on with no power indicated to the system. Took it apart again to see if I failed to plug something in and found no problems, but unplugged and plugged some of the wires I know i had removed. Again nothing. Now I'm concerned there's no power at all so traced the input power to the transformers and checked the ouput. the main transformer PT1 seems to have no output and PT2 about 12Volts. I wonder if something got shorted when I first reassembled it. I'll keep on checking to see there's something more obvious with the PT1 output. There's resistor in the path on one side, perhaps it may be a problem. I do think Im not getting power to the main board so it has to be something on the power CB. Any insights would be appreciated.
