Just bought a nearly mint Olympus J500 for only 12€. It works fine except for the tape counter. Before taking apart the recorder, anyone has some tips about this issue? Quite easy to open the back panel, very accessible the main belt, but the counter gear is under the circuit board and without removing it, I can't see nothing.
Located the two tape counter spoons, they are very hidden under the board. The issue is the I don't know how to take a part the front case of the recorder. It seems that is necessary to remove the cassette door, but I don't understand how this can be done.
Some of these are super-complicated to get to the screws, I've had to buy service manuals to find the locations. Some units have screws in the front cassette well, there might be one under the sticker. The cassette door might slide off to reveal a screw or it might hold in part of the electronics. There's probably a small pool of talent that has actually worked on one.
Unfortunately, I don't see any screws inside the cassette compartment. I give up on repairing the tape counter. Too bad! They designed the recorder to make it very easy to replace the main belt but not the tape counter belt.
